Trump Wants to Whitewash History

President Trump’s latest diktat claims there is “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is in the crosshairs. First proposed by Black Civil War veterans, NMAAHC was more than 100 years in the making. The Smithsonian museum traveled a “long road to hard truth.”

Trump’s “corrosive ideology” is the hard truth about American history.

Writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin testified in support of legislation to establish the National Commission on Negro History and Culture.

Baldwin observed:

[Black] history … contains the truth about America. It is going to be hard to teach it.

[…]

I am the flesh of your flesh and bone of your bones; I have been here as long as you have been here – longer – I paid for it as much as you have. It is my country, too. Do recognize that that is the whole question. My history and culture has to be taught. It is yours.

[…]

Everyone has basic emotions of hate, fear, and love, and I think the whites in this country have used the machinery of propaganda very skillfully. You find blacks who want to know something about their history and you find whites who don’t understand or who are fearful. They will publicize this sort of thing as a hate gathering and a hate meeting, when actually it could possibly be a historical meeting that whites and blacks could learn from.

From the forced removal of indigenous people to the enslavement of Africans, “race-centered ideology” is woven into the fabric of the nation.

Signer of the Declaration of Independence and second President of the United States John Adams said:

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Slaveholder Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It is an objective fact that Jefferson was accompanied by his enslaved personal servant, Robert Hemmings.

It is an objective fact that more than 60 percent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence enslaved Black people.

It is an objective fact that the nation’s founding principles did not include Black people. It is a national shame that “our shared past” includes ratification of the U.S. Constitution that counted the enslaved as three-fifths of a person.

It is an objective fact that George Washington hounded self-emancipated Ona Judge until the day he died.

It is an objective fact that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his enslaved concubine Sally Hemings.

Resisting DOGE at National Park Service

It’s Sunshine Week but there’s nothing but clouds in Washington, where President Trump and Elon Musk are spreading chaos and sowing fear. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has illegally fired tens of thousands of federal employees, including 1,000 National Park Service workers.

Judge William Alsup ordered the immediate reinstatement of unlawfully terminated employees:

It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie.

A group of NPS rangers is fighting back. The Resistance Rangers said in a statement:

Resistance Rangers will not see this ruling as a win until illegally terminated employees from all agencies outlined in the court’s rulings are reinstated in their roles, with back pay and their records cleared. As Judge Alsup noted, it is critical that these employees have the false accusation of “poor performance” removed from their records.

The unlawful terminations impact more than NPS rangers who work at national parks. Park rangers are stewards of national monuments and historic sites, including the African Burial Ground, Statute of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the President’s House, Independence Hall and the Portrait Gallery in the Second Bank.

The Portrait Gallery has been closed due to a staff shortage since 2024. NPS terminations include two employees at Independence National Historic Park.

The Portrait Gallery is one of the few places where the story of Moses Williams is in public memory. I have nominated Williams for a Pennsylvania historical marker.

Enslaved by “Artist of the Revolution” Charles Willson Peale, Williams was a master silhouette artist who operated a physiognotrace (face tracing machine) at Peale’s Museum which was located in the building now known as Independence Hall.

A NPS ranger demonstrates the physiognotrace at the Portrait Gallery.

I will submit a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of the Interior for records related to the unlawful termination of Independence National Historic Park workers, the President’s House, Independence Hall, and the Portrait Gallery in the Second Bank.

Sunshine Week 2025

March 16-22, 2025 is Sunshine Week, a time to celebrate transparency, and the public’s right to know what government officials are doing and saying behind closed doors. PHL Watchdog is a Sunshine Week partner.

For more than a year, the City of Philadelphia and SEPTA have fought release of communications with the Philadelphia 76ers related to their now abandoned plan to build an arena atop Jefferson Station. While the Save Chinatown Coalition has given up the fight to obtain records from SEPTA, giving up is not in my DNA. The City and SEPTA eventually will have to give it up and produce the records.

On March 17, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records will host a panel discussion, Getting to Know Pennsylvania’s Transparency Laws, moderated by Paula Knudsen Burke, senior supervising attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Knudsen Burke represents me on the City’s and SEPTA’s appeals. The event is free and open to the public. Go here to register to attend in person or virtually.

A list of Sunshine Week activities is available here.

Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work

On his second day back in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order that rolled back federal civil rights protections claiming discrimination against white men:

Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.

The executive order encouraged “the private sector to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

Before the ink was dry on the executive order, corporations from Amazon to Zoom began to dismantle their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

DeShuna Spencer, creator of kweliTV, launched DEI Watch “to create a space that keeps consumers informed and holds corporations accountable for the promises they’ve made.” DEI Watch will use publicly available data to track companies that have ended or scaled back DEI efforts, as well as companies that continue to actively support and implement DEI initiatives.

In a statement, Spencer said:

DEI isn’t about lowering standards—it’s about leveling the playing field. Qualified Black professionals and other underrepresented groups have long been shut out—not because of a lack of talent, but due to systemic barriers that limit access to opportunities. DEI doesn’t push merit aside for equity; it ensures that talent and hard work—not bias or exclusion—are what truly open doors for all.

Harkening back to the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement during the Great Depression, the NAACP has launched the Black Consumer Advisory. NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson said:

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – diversity is better for the bottom line. The NAACP stands firm in our belief that, in a global economy, those who reject the multicultural nature of consumerism and business will be left in the past they are living in. That’s why we’re proud to launch the Black Consumer Advisory, reminding our community that in addition to voting on our principles, we have the power to choose where we spend our money. I am confident that this framework will support our community as we make difficult decisions on where to spend our hard-earned money. If corporations want our dollars, they better be ready to do the right thing.

To sign the Black Consumer Pledge, go here.

Black History Month: Moses Williams

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History has proclaimed African Americans and Labor as the theme for this year’s celebration of Black History Month:

The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work.

I am celebrating the work of Moses Williams who was born into slavery in Philadelphia in August 1776.

Enslaved by Charles Willson Peale, Williams was a factotum at Peale’s Museum. He participated in the first paleontological expedition in the early republic. As a skilled taxidermist, Williams was instrumental in the reconstruction of Peale’s excavated mastodon.

Manumitted in 1802, Williams operated a physiognotrace (face-tracing) machine “every day and evening” at Peale’s Museum.

Working in anonymity, Williams became a master silhouette artist and contributed to the success of Peale’s Museum. In Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now, Asma Naeem observed:

Williams defied racial strictures by using his [hands] to make the portraits of hundreds of thousands of white individuals. The sight of Williams operating the physiognotrace at the Peale Museum on a daily basis, year after year, offered a consistent, if somewhat tepid, rebuke to the proslavery discourse of suppression and forcible restraining of black people – in effect, an undoing of the chained hands of the African in Josiah Wedgwood’s “Am I not a man and a brother?”… In no uncertain terms, Williams became less disenfranchised with the commercial viability of silhouettes, changing his position from being enslaved to buying his own home and marrying the white Peale family cook. … [Williams was] able to enjoy a success inextricably tied to the rising status of the silhouette as a domestic commodity and popular mode of representation.

Williams is the subject of countless scholarly articles. His silhouettes are on view at, among other places, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Portrait Gallery in the Second Bank of the United States, The Peale Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, and Thomas Jefferson’s Library at Monticello.

Williams was born one month after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was enslaved by “The Artist of the Revolution” Charles Willson Peale who, as a member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, voted for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act of 1780.

Williams was the nation’s first Black museum professional. While working on the second floor of the building now known as Independence Hall, he excelled as a “cutter of profiles” and earned a place in history.

To recognize his impact on the Revolutionary era’s visual culture, I have nominated Moses Williams for a Pennsylvania historical marker. If the nomination is approved, Williams’ marker will be dedicated in 2026, which is the 250th anniversary of both Williams’ birth and the founding of the nation.

Moses Williams will not be celebrated by President Trump’s Task Force 250, but we the people will say his name.

In the meantime, I will investigate what happened to Williams’ remains.

Williams joined the ancestors on December 18, 1830. He was interred at Northwest Burial Ground on December 20, 1830.

Northwest Burial Ground was located in North Philadelphia. Between 1860 and 1875, the burial ground closed, the bodies disinterred, and the land developed for a church. So where was Williams reinterred? Is his gravesite marked?

For updates, send your name and email address to phillyjazzapp@gmail.com.

Black History Month: Ida B. Wells

Educator and investigative journalist Ida B. Wells gave no quarter to white supremacists. Born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War, Wells led an anti-lynching campaign and became a prominent voice against racial violence and discrimination.

Beginning in 2022, the U.S. Mint American Women Quarters Program has commemorated phenomenal women.

The 2025 honorees are Althea Gibson, Juliette Gordon Low, Stacey Park Milbern, Dr. Vera Rubin and Ida B. Wells.

The quarters give new meaning to making some coin. To secure a bag of Ida B. Wells quarters, go here.

76ers Arena Was All a Dream

Josh Harris, David Blitzer and David Adelman have moved on. 76 Place Facebook and X (Twitter) accounts, and website were scrubbed from the internet on January 16, 2025, less than a month after City Council caved in to the billionaires’ demands.

But the internet never forgets. 76 Place falsehoods, factoids and disinformation live on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, including this pledge.

From Day One, the billionaires were all in for themselves. They pledge allegiance to the almighty dollar. More money is what they want.

Common Sense and 76ers Arena Nonsense

The City of Philadelphia and SEPTA are fighting release of records related to the Sixers’ proposal to build an arena atop Jefferson Station as ordered by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records in 2023. The city and SEPTA appealed the OOR’s final determination. Their lawyers have asked whether I want to continue to pursue my records requests. If they want to end litigation, the city and SEPTA can simply stop litigating and turn over the records.

For more than two years, Philadelphia’s misleaders gaslighted the public into believing that all that was needed for the Sixers’ half-baked proposal to become “a done deal” was the approval of enabling legislation by City Council.

It is said that common sense is not so common. Neither Mayor Cherelle L. Parker nor City Council can grant the right to build on SEPTA property. Someone on Mayor Parker’s bloated staff should have had enough common sense to ask whether SEPTA was on board with the transit-oriented development.

We now know SEPTA was not on board. Then-interim General Manager Scott Sauer’s testimony before City Council’s November 19, 2024 public hearing should have ended the nonsensical notion that 76 Place would keep the transit agency from falling off the fiscal cliff:

The reality is that SEPTA simply cannot assume these new costs within the framework of its operating budget… SEPTA cannot shoulder the burden of expanded transit costs at 76 Place which would be in addition to the existing fiscal challenges.

Mayor Parker and 12 City Council members ignored the red flags. As I wrote in an opinion piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Sixers’ billionaire owners knew the Federal Transit Administration was the shot caller in the 76ers arena saga:

SEPTA received federal funding to make improvements to Jefferson Station. In order to protect the “federal interest,” changes to the use of the station must be approved by the Federal Transit Administration. In other words, federal officials call the shots.

Sixers co-owner David Adelman tacitly acknowledged the crucial role played by Washington in a social media post following City Council’s 12-5 vote: “We look forward to pursuing the remaining approvals to make 76Place a reality.”

Read more.

76 Place Game Is Over

The Philadelphia 76ers billionaire owners gamed Philadelphia’s “corrupt and contented” ecosystem. When building an arena atop SEPTA’s Jefferson Station no longer served their interest, it was game over. The 76ers are staying in South Philly with their landlord-turned-partner, Comcast Spectacor.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

The team has struck a deal with Comcast Spectacor to remain in the South Philadelphia sports complex, after more than two years of heated debate over moving to a potential new arena on East Market Street.

[…]

The reversal is a stunning end to a saga that has dominated city politics for more than a year and a setback for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and others who championed the $1.3 billion Center City proposal.

At a press conference, Mayor Parker said, “This is a curveball that none of us saw coming.” Well, I saw it coming. It was only a matter of time before the Sixers abandoned their public transit-oriented project.

The ballyhooed legislation City Council passed was little more than a zoning permit. Neither Mayor Parker nor City Council can give the billionaires the right to enter Jefferson Station. They need SEPTA’s and the Federal Transit Administration’s approval of the development project. The review process could take years.

So, the billionaires were negotiating a deal with Comcast Spectacor while Mayor Parker and City Council were carrying their water. Philly’s misleaders were not just played. In the immortal words of Malcolm X, they were had, took, hoodwinked and bamboozled.