Master silhouette artist Moses Wlliams passed away on December 13, 1830. Born into slavery in August 1776, Moses lived in the shadow of his enslaver, Charles Willson Peale. Moses grew up in the same household with Peale’s children, but he was denied the opportunity to learn the fine art of painting that was afforded his enslaver’s children.
Moses made a way out of no way. He excelled as a silhouette artist and earned a place in history. Moses’ Pennsylvania historical marker will be dedicated in 2026, the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Moses was interred at Northwest Burial Ground on December 20, 1830. Sometime between 1853 and 1868, the burial ground was sold, the bodies disinterred, and a church constructed on the site. Some of the remains were removed to Section 203 at Mount Moriah Cemetery in 1868 under a monument that reads: “Sacred to the memory of the dead whose remains were removed from the 16th and Coates St. Cemetery of St. Georges M. E. Church Philadelphia to this place in the year 1868.”
Mount Moriah has no record that Moses’ remains were among those reinterred in Section 203. In the absence of a final resting place, All That Philly Jazz Director Faye Anderson plastered the only known image of Moses in Freeman Alley, a graffitied place of remembrance in New York City.
Pasting over others’ stickers is part of the culture of Freeman Alley.
When Moses Williams’ historical marker is unveiled in 2026, he will have a permanent place in public memory.
The dedication ceremony is open to the public. If you are interested in attending, send your name and email address to phillyjazzapp@gmail.com.
A few days before Fall of Freedom walking tour of Billie Holiday’s Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer published All That Philly Jazz Director Faye Anderson’s opinion piece in which she wrote:
No artist has met the moment with more courage than Lady Day, whose 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” was named song of the century by Time magazine in 1999, and was added to the National Recording Registry in 2002.
“Strange Fruit” is a timeless and empowering act of creative resistance
While Holiday is sui generis, jazz musicians were the vanguard of the civil rights movement.
At so-called black and tan clubs like the Down Beat and the Blue Note, Black and white people intermingled on an equal basis for the first time.
Jazz clubs were constantly harassed by Philadelphia police led by vice squad Capt. Clarence Ferguson and his protégé, Inspector Frank Rizzo. The nightspots became battlegrounds in the struggle for racial justice. Jazz musicians’ unbowed demeanor fashioned a new racial identity
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Courage is contagious. When we gather on South Broad, we are the resistance.
In collaboration with Scribe Video Center, the walking tour began at the Academy of Music where Billie had several engagements, including on May 6, 1946.
We stopped at the former location of the Radnor Hotel, a Green Book site, where Billie and her husband-manager, Louis McKay, were arrested on February 23, 1956. The raid was led by Captain Clarence Ferguson of the Philadelphia Police vice squad. The arrest is depicted in the biopic United States vs. Billie Holiday.
The penultimate stop was the site of Emerson’s Tavern, the jazz club where Billie last performed in Philadelphia. Emerson’s is the setting for the Broadway play, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.”
The walk and talk ended at the former Attucks Hotel where on May 15, 1947, Billie’s room was raided while she was performing at the Earle Theater. Billie got a heads-up and fled to New York City where three days later she was arrested. She was subsequently convicted of narcotics possession and sentenced to one year and one day. Billie served her time at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.
The following Monday, Faye plastered the sticker that was given to participants all over Freeman Alley, a graffitied place of remembrance on the Lower East Side. Freedman Alley is located about a mile from Café Society, the Greenwich Village jazz club where Billie first sang “Strange Fruit.”
In the participant feedback survey, Faye expressed her hope that Fall of Freedom would lead to Winter of Our Discontent and Freedom Summer.
Authoritarian regimes throughout history have targeted artists and cultural institutions. Early in his administration, President Trump issued an executive order that targeted the Smithsonian Institution.
Trump has taken over federal arts agencies and installed himself as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He threatens to withhold federal funding from organizations that do not bend the knee.
Nina Simone said an artist’s duty is to reflect the times and the situations in which they find themselves.
Today, we find ourselves in a situation in which Trump wants to control the narrative.
Fall of Freedom issued an urgent call to artists, creators and cultural workers to stand united against the assault on our constitutional rights and authoritarian control. Fall of Freedom is a celebration of art, courage, and free expression.
No artist reflected the times more courageously than Billie Holiday whose recording of “Strange Fruit” was named Song of the Century by Time magazine in 1999 and included in the National Recording Registry in 2002.
The walking tour will be guided by All That Philly Jazz Director Faye Anderson whose advocacy led to Billie’s induction into the Philadelphia Walk of Fame. We will visit the venues where Billie sang, the hotels where she stayed, and the site of the jazz club immortalized in the Tony Award®-winning “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.”
Along the way, we will stop at places connected to Nina Simone and Paul Robeson, artists who, like Billie, used their voices to speak truth to power.
The event is free and open to all, but registration is required. To reserve your spot, scan the QR code or go here.
Art matters. Courage is contagious. We are the resistance.
Since his return to the White House, President Trump has punished individuals and institutions that refuse to bend the knee. In a guest essay published in the New York Times, Henry J. Farrell, a professor of democracy and international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, argues that collective action is the best defense against authoritarianism:
President Trump is trying to seize power that he is not entitled to under the law or the Constitution.
But Mr. Trump will fail in remaking American politics if people and institutions coordinate against him, which is why his administration is targeting businesses, nonprofits and the rest of civil society, proposing corrupting bargains to those who acquiesce and punishing holdouts to terrify the rest into submission.
This is one part of Mr. Trump’s bigger agenda to remake American politics so that everyone wants to be his friend and no one dares to be his enemy.
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Those who oppose authoritarianism have to play a different game, creating solidarity among an unwieldy coalition, which knows that if everyone holds together, they will surely succeed.
Coordinated resistance stopped the National Park Service from removing interpretive signs at the President’s House for now.
In a recent editorial, the Philadelphia Inquirer acknowledged the impact of vigilance and collective courage:
Kudos to everyone who pushed back against Donald Trump’s attempt to whitewash the history of slavery at the President’s House site near the Liberty Bell.
Trump’s ridiculous executive order instructed the National Park Service to remove or cover up displays on federal sites that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
The arbitrary Sept. 17 deadline to remove the material has passed. For now, the President’s House exhibits remain untouched. But vigilance is still required, given Trump’s erratic policy approach and alarming cognitive state.
I am name-checked in the editorial. All That Philly Jazz is one of 255 signatories to an open statement pushing back against Trump’s attacks on arts and cultural institutions.
Mobilized by the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, we are standing together to resist censorship:
Arts and culture bring people together. They spark joy, foster belonging, enrich communities, and help us imagine new possibilities. Arts and culture also open space for complexity—for grappling with different perspectives, for hearing what we might rather ignore, and for facing what makes us uncomfortable. Cultural organizations, including art, culture, history, and science museums, as well as libraries, theaters, and dance and performance spaces, make these encounters possible. They are key to the functioning of a democracy, as they promote freedom of expression, encourage critical thinking, and create important opportunities for public discussion and dissent.
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As contributors to the sphere of art and culture, and as representatives of US art and cultural institutions that create space for art, ideas, innovation, and public engagement, we stand firm in the shared values that make for a robust arts and culture landscape: free expression, active debate, responsibility, and care.
Harriet Tubman began her journey to freedom on Monday, September 17, 1849.
On Monday, September 15, 2025, the Washington Post reported on President Trump’s plan to whitewash the everyday brutality of slavery, including removing the photograph of self-emancipated Peter from Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia. The photograph of “a typical Negro” was first published in Harper’s Weekly on July 4, 1863.
Abolitionists used the iconic photograph to raise awareness of “how bad slavery was.” I recently viewed an original print of “The Scourged Back” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
According to the Post, interpretive panels at the President’s House have been flagged for removal:
In his executive order, Trump singled out the “corrosive ideology” at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, where the founders signed the Declaration of Independence.
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“This is not just a handful of signs that tell the story of slavery,” said Ed Stierli, senior Mid-Atlantic regional director at the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association. “This is a place that tells the complete story not just of slavery in America, but what it was like for those who were enslaved by George Washington.”
Trying to extricate slavery from the President’s House exhibit would fundamentally change the nature of the site, said Cindy MacLeod, who was superintendent of Independence National Historical Park for 15 years until 2023.
I have President Trump fatigue. And I’m not alone. According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, only 37 percent of voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job; 55 percent disapprove.
There are signs of resistance to the chaos and madness. So this Labor Day, the message is in the music.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift wrote: “I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves.”
President Trump claims he wants to restore “truth and sanity to American history.” Facing the threat of termination, National Park Service employees may be forced to acquiesce to the insane notion of “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
For the wannabe king, the truth is what he says it is.
In a joint statement, the American Association for State and Local History, Organization of American Historians, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Association of African American Museums, and National Council on Public History, denounced Trump’s diktat to rewrite history:
National Park Service (NPS) sites are being forced to remove historical content that the White House views as “negative about either past or living Americans.” This top-down directive erases people and events that do not fit within a narrow, triumphalist view of history.
What makes this erasure even more alarming is that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), which runs NPS, is couching its censorship efforts in the very terms that historians and educators often use to explain their own work. Federal officials are eliminating the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and others from history while calling it—to quote a DOI spokesperson—“honest, respectful storytelling” that “honor[s] the complexity of our nation’s shared journey.” In fact, they are doing the opposite. And requiring knowledgeable NPS staff to attribute these alterations to the White House’s interest in “historical accuracy” is doubly deceptive and contrary to the professional standards by which historians conduct their work.
Our country’s 433 NPS sites, which serve millions of visitors per year, are just the starting point for this skewed approach to history, but they will not be the last. Recent pressure on the Smithsonian Institution, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute for Museum and Library Services, and others show just how far this administration is willing to go to distort the past toward ideological aims in the present. This drive to sanitize and warp history endangers vital sources of public knowledge, from state and local history museums to social studies classrooms to libraries.
The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation, an open-air installation, was dedicated on December 15, 2010. The National Park Service site pays homage to the nine enslaved people in the household of President George Washington – Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules, Joe, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris and Richmond.
The President’s House at Independence National Historical Park was born out of protest.
In a sign of the times, the President’s House is in the crosshairs of President Trump who wants to sugarcoat and whitewash American history. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the site has been flagged for content review:
The President’s House Site, where Presidents George Washington and John Adams once lived, came under particular scrutiny with six exhibits flagged for review. The exhibit focuses on the contradictory coexistence of liberty and slavery during the founding of America and memorializes the people Washington enslaved.
For instance, park staff commented on a display titled “Life Under Slavery,” flagging that it “speaks of whipping, depriving of food, clothing, and shelter; as well as beating, torturing, and raping those they enslaved.”
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Thirteen specific items spread across six exhibits at the site were identified for review.
This includes components of displays titled: “Life Under Slavery,” “History Lost & Found,” “The Executive Branch,” “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” “The House and the People Who Worked & Lived In It,” and an illustration with the words “An Act respecting fugitives from Justice,” in reference to Washington’s signing of the Fugitive Slave Act, according to an internal form, reviewed by The Inquirer, where employees were directed to submit their reviews.
In 2002, the NPS had planned to ignore the full and accurate history of the site. The Liberty Bell Center, then-under construction, is in the footprint of President Washington’s slave quarters (circled).
Attorney Michael Coard, a founder of Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, was a member of the President’s House Project Oversight Committee which oversaw development and construction of the site. Coard led the charge to tell the full story.
We will resist any attempt to erase the complicated history of this memory site.
As we protest to preserve the physical structure and interpretive panels, we also will use digital technologies and 3D modeling to reconstruct the President’s House and outbuildings without constraint or compromise.
The President’s House.ai will be accessible to visitors on any device or browser anywhere in the world.
We will create AI-generated avatars of the nine African descendants enslaved by President Washington, including Ona Judge (1773-1848) and Hercules Posey (1748-1812).
Visitors to the President’s House.ai will be able to hold real-time conversations with the AI ancestors. The avatars’ training will be grounded in trusted primary and secondary sources.
AI Ona will spill the tea on how she escaped from bondage.
President Washington placed an advertisement in the May 24, 1796 edition of The Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser offering a $10 reward (roughly $365 today) for the capture of Oney Judge.
As activists, historians, architects and technologists resist President Trump’s efforts to censor uncomfortable truths, the witless president unwittingly triggered the Streisand Effect.
In the summer of 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) launched the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. In addition to voter education, COFO organized 41 Freedom Schools where Black children were taught reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as Black history and culture.
In the winter of 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to whitewash American history. Federal agencies are deleting webpages.
In a memorandum, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell wrote:
By March 5, 2025, Components must take all practicable steps, consistent with records management requirements, to remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). All articles, photos, and videos removed from DoD websites and social media platforms must be archived and retained in accordance with applicable records management policies/
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Social Media Content: Components must remove and follow records management requirements for DEI content removed from all official DoD social media accounts. If Components cannot remove DEI content from DoD social media accounts by March 5, 2025, they must temporarily remove from public display all news articles, photos and videos published between January 20, 2021, and January 19, 2025, until the content is fully reviewed and DEI content removed. While DBI-related content outside of this date range must also be removed, articles, photos, and videos from the last four years are the immediate priority to align DoD communication with the current Administration.
Federal agencies plan to decommission hundreds of websites. We must be intentional and fight the erasure of webpages related to Black history and culture.
Inspired by the freedom schools of the Civil Rights Movement, Archiving the Black Web (ATBW) has organized the Freedom School for Web Archiving, a series of webinars that will train “new generations of memory workers to preserve and steward online content that reflects the Black experience… Participants will gain foundational skills in web archiving—whether for personal, community, or institutional use—and explore how this work resists erasure, disinformation, and historical revisionism.”
The Freedom School for Web Archiving is free and open to the public. To register for a webinar, go here.
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