The African Enslavement Memorial
Why & How We Reproduced It
Why We're Reproducing These
In January 2026 memorial panels at the President’s House site were removed. These panels (part of the African Enslavement Memorial and the broader President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation installation) documented the realities of slavery in early Philadelphia and at the very home where Presidents George Washington and John Adams once lived.
It’s worth noting that the “Founding Fathers” were far more self aware of their own hypocrisy and vice than often given credit. Many wrote of expecting to be held accountable by future generations. They knew the annals of history would not venerate their failures, but hold them accountable accurately. We know of their civic-contradictions and personal affairs because they openly called each other out.
Perhaps the seminal expression of this culture is a constitutional model predicated upon evolution, revision … the future generations hindsight fueled wisdom. Better said then I ever could, google “Joe Pesci Constitution Speech With Honors”.
The point is that they would have raised hell at the removal of their truth, ugly or not. For these were not individuals who scorned their flaws. They reconciled them brutally in effort to not be like the generations before. More contemporarily, John Lennon wrote the words of “Getting Better All The Time” publicly outing himself as a wife beater because he knew what all people of integrity know – ‘my flaws are a futures blueprints on how not to be terrible.’
As such, these panels sat at the heart of the nation’s founding narrative, directly beside Independence Hall making visible a truth too often whitewashed: the ideals of liberty articulated here, were breathed alongside the practice of human bondage.
When public history is removed from public space & discourse it becomes easier to avoid, easier to forget, and harder to access. This is often the very intent of those who behind the destruction. That said, as Live CarePhilly’s mission is to “co-burden & amplify the efforts of those sacrificing to make Philadelphia a more beautiful and dignified place to be”, we see it as fulfilling our purpose to help co-burden this country’s legacy, those who’ve toiled to keep it accurate and to amplify the voice of it with the files above. So feel free to save and download the PDF above if you’d like.
Why Live CarePhilly Is Printing Freely
In addition to the free downloadable PDF, Live CarePhilly is printing 11×17 copies of the panels for free, and distributing them to community organizers as much as we can afford to.
We are not a protest organization.
We are not a political committee.
And we are not attempting to replace the memorial or speak on behalf of descendants, historians, or institutions.
But we do believe something fundamental: history that was once publicly available should not quietly disappear.
The Problem We Ran Into
So we began looking for clear images. Nope.
So we put out a call on social media asking if anyone had photographs of the removed panels. We got a several DMs with links to different images but they almost all had the same problem, the text was barely (if at all) readable.
Reconstructing The Panels
Eventually, we were directed to a resource hosted by the Historical Marker Database (HMDB), which includes transcriptions of many of the President’s House panels. Go Birds!
From there we manually retyped the panel text and reformatted it to match the original layouts as closely as possible. We overlaid those text blocks onto panel images so that the panels became readable again. We did not add branding or commentary of course. We did not alter the language, of course. The goal was preservation and access and yayyyy … we ended up with were clean, readable reproductions of the panels.
Disseminating
Historical Record
Besides the available digital file, we are offering to print the panels at 11×17, landscape for free. This size is practical to post in classrooms, offices, storefront windows, community centers, homes or walls wherever’s clever.
We’re doing this because printing matters. It removes algorithms, paywalls, and platform dependency. It allows history to exist where people already are rather than requiring them to seek it out not to mention, printing is a big part of what we do. We’re newsies. So if the original panels were removed from public space where the are supposed to be, our job is not to centralize them elsewhere but to co-burden the amplification of them.
~ Text Before Restoration ~
~ Text After Restoration ~
Free, On Purpose
So ya, as much as our budget allows, we are distributing these prints FOR FREE. And of course making the PDF available also for free download, right in this article (scroll up and click on “SAVE” where you see the PDF).
History belongs to the public.
Truth belongs to life.
Access to it should not depend on power and money, affiliation, or cost.
We ask only that the materials be used for progress and community edification.
What This Is — and What It Isn’t
This is an act of civic responsibility.
It is not a replacement for the African Enslavement Memorial.
It is not a claim to authority over the history or documents.
It is a practical response to an abuse of authority.
An Invitation
We invite educators, neighbors, organizations, and anyone who believes public history should remain public to not only download the PDF, print the panels, and share them responsibly but also to digest the process outlined above and join in.
Be creative, be audacious. You can be scared but be courageous and above all, unrelentingly playful. For it is in the curious whimsy and fantastical flight that hate finds decay. It can not win against Love and in fact, bad things happen to good people exactly so that we know the value of each other, of community and of Love.
History does not end when cowards momentarily take over. It moves through us, the people, through paper, through classrooms and conversations. When history is removed from public view, communities rise and repeat in order to restore and rage on.
go birds!
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