More than seven years after Congress directed the National Park Service "to appropriately commemorate" the presidential home in Philadelphia - where at least nine of George Washington's slaves toiled - no workable interpretive program explaining the site and its significance is ready for public discussion, project managers say.
Mayor Nutter has seen no text, images, or panels, and the design team developing the descriptive historical material has been told to rework it at least twice, according to numerous officials.
Should the President's House memorial highlight the worlds of Washington and John Adams and the formation of the nation and presidency? Should it focus on the world of Washington's slaves? What was slavery's role in early Philadelphia? How should such contradictory, clashing themes be balanced? How can the nine slaves best be memorialized? Such questions, there at the project's onset, are still unresolved, though passionately debated.
Members of a committee convened by the city and the Park Service to monitor the project now express frustration, and outside historians and concerned citizens in the black community believe they are being kept uninformed about what is going on.
Adding urgency, the city has set a deadline of July 4, 2010, for a grand opening with a hoped-for appearance by President Obama - and that, some believe, is now perilously driving the project at its most sensitive stage.
"It has not been pretty, but we didn't want to put anything out there that's embarrassing," said Cynthia MacLeod, superintendent of Independence National Historical Park, which has handed off management of the $8.5 million project to the city but will ultimately run the site.
Many inside and outside the project - now under way at Sixth and Market Streets - want a public meeting with Nutter and the design group to dispel rumors and misconceptions about what is or is not in the memorial.
And some long-involved historians believe the project is headed off the tracks.
"I am deeply unhappy about the process," said Michael Zuckerman, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and part of an advisory group known as the ad hoc historians. "I'm probably truly less unhappy with the product, but I think the two are interconnected. Basically, we are talking about deadlines that people are imposing that make a mockery of consultation."
Zuckerman and many others fear "a train wreck." Rosalyn J. McPherson, who is managing the project for the city, says that won't happen.
"We've been going through what exhibition projects go through - a lot of back and forth, a tug-of-war, to satisfy a lot of diverse viewpoints," she said. "This painful process is to be expected, and I think we are almost ready to come out on the other side."
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), who is on the House Appropriations Committee and shepherded the mandate into a fiscal 2003 Interior Department bill, said he was optimistic.
"The work that's been done to date is exemplary," he said, adding that the mandate's intent was "to recognize the existence of the first executive office with George Washington and to appropriately commemorate" the slaves who lived there. (Washington's successor, Adams, a slavery opponent, occupied the house for most of his term, until the federal government moved to the newly constructed city of Washington in 1800.)
Yet despite assurances by project managers and government officials, criticism of the way the interpretive program is being devised, and of the lack of available information, is widespread.
Members of Generations Unlimited, an activist organization focused on African American historical issues that has been included in Park Service consultations, are increasingly vocal in calling for a public forum.
"We want a public meeting on the [interpretive] text," said Sacaree Rhodes, a member of the group. "I want the story told about chattel slavery and what it was in this city. I believe that the public - the public means black people who pay taxes - should have a public meeting. . . . Every one of those people, persons on that committee, should be polled about what slavery is to them. We're paying their way. We're paying for them to sit and write lies? To cover up the truth?"
Historian Charles Blockson, a member of Generations Unlimited who sat on the project's reviewing committee but withdrew in frustration, also called for a public meeting with Nutter.
"People are hungry for truth," he said. "We need a public meeting . . . to air things out."
Blockson is concerned that the context of slavery in Philadelphia - the selling of captives from the London Coffee House auction block at Front and Market Streets and from ships in the Delaware River, the holding pens that dotted the cityscape around the President's House, and other dark details - are being brushed aside in the rush to create an agreeable tourist attraction.
James Brown, executive director of the Parkside Historic Preservation Corp., agreed that a discussion of the Philadelphia system of slavery was imperative. Otherwise, "the site is going to be treated as something less than it is."
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOST POPULAR PHILLY.COM PHOTOS
Daily Headlines
Subscribe now! Daily Headlines Newsletter
Philly.com news blogs
Philly.com Promotions
