UPDATED: Judge orders Trump administration to restore Philadelphia slavery exhibit

Portrait of Absalom Jones by Philadelphia artist Raphaelle Peale in 1810.

Editor’s note: The Trump administration on Feb. 17  said it would appeal the judge’s order to restore the exhibit. On Feb. 19, the judge set a Feb. 20 deadline for the exhibit to be reinstated.

[Episcopal News Service] A federal judge on Feb. 16 ordered the Trump administration to restore an open-air exhibit about slavery featuring a panel on the Rev. Absalom Jones at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In late January, the National Park Service removed the exhibit, “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” which opened in 2010 on the site where Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived in the 1790s. It was removed in response to President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order prohibiting national sites from showcasing negative aspects of U.S. history, including slavery.

The exhibit features Jones, the first Black ordained Episcopal priest and founder of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, and the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, founder and first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Jones and Allen co-founded the Free African Society, an organization that provided aid to Black people newly freed from enslavement.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration filed a federal lawsuit the same day the exhibit was removed.

“BREAKING NEWS!!! Siblings in prayerful struggle together,” St. Thomas’ Church wrote in a Feb. 16 Facebook post. The post includes a photo of the Very Rev. Martini Shaw, rector of St. Thomas’, with the Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, the first AME church.

The exhibit was removed four days before the start of February, Black History Month, and months ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding. Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, will host major celebrations throughout 2026.

The ruling, which was ordered by U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, but specifies that the historic site must be safely maintained and continue memorializing the enslaved people who lived in the President’s House Site. The ruling also bars further alterations to the site. Rufe gave the Trump administration until Feb. 20 to reinstate the exhibit.

In her ruling, Rufe compared the federal government’s claim to have the authority to unilaterally control National Parks exhibits to the Ministry of Truth in “1984,” George Orwell’s dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime.

“This court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims – to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote. “It does not.”

The ruling occurred one day after St. Thomas, in partnership with nearby Christ Church and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, hosted the Diocese of Pennsylvania’s annual Feast of Absalom Jones celebration on Feb. 15. Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached, and Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez presided. Members of Mother Bethel AME, including Cavaness, and a presiding prelate of the AME Church also participated in this year’s celebration.

In his sermon, Curry told the packed church to “keep going” no matter the obstacles in the fight for justice and fairness. He also told the story of the unjust judge in Luke 18, in which a poor widow felt wronged, but couldn’t get justice from a man Curry described as a “powerful and rich official.” So, she went back to him, day after day, asking him to do what was right, until he finally got tired of her visits and gave in.

“[Jesus] was telling them, sometimes you’ve got to wear this world down,” Curry said, as applause spread through the congregation. “Wear it down from its nightmare until God’s dream gets realized for all of God’s children.”

Absalom Jones was born into slavery in 1746 and released from bondage in 1784 following the American Revolution. He founded St. Thomas’ in 1792 and served as the church’s first rector. In 1802, he was ordained a priest. Jones’ feast day in The Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts calendar is Feb. 13, the date commemorating his death in 1818 at 71.

In a Feb. 4 interview with ENS discussing St. Thomas’ upcoming celebration of Jones’ life and ministry, Shaw told Episcopal News Service that the exhibit’s removal was going to bring “a totally different emphasis and focus on the celebration this year at the church.”

“But while some want to erase history,”  he said, “we in the church are prepared to celebrate history.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.