Truth is Truth

Truth is Truth

By Peggy Townsend

The other day, my four-year-old grandson informed me that he had eaten all his breakfast despite the chunks of fried egg that remained on his plate.

“But I ate it,” he insisted when I challenged him.

He was clearly hoping I would ignore what was right in front of me and believe his version of the truth.

I couldn’t help but compare my grandson’s breakfast gaslighting to the January government-ordered dismantling of an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historic Park in Philadelphia.

According to an article in the Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/01/22/slavery-exhibit-removed/ the exhibit’s removal was done as part of the administration’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, which aims to get rid of what it determines is anti-American and “negative” narratives from national parks and monuments.

The exhibit reportedly ran afoul of the order because it included information about President George Washington’s ownership of nine enslaved people, along with a brief history of the slave trade in the Americas and details of the lives of some of Washington’s slaves, including a woman named Oney Judge, who escaped from the household rather than being given away to Martha Washington’s granddaughter.

The Organization of American Historians https://www.oah.org/2026/01/24/statement-on-the-freedom-and-slavery-exhibit-removal-at-independence-national-historical-park/ called the exhibit a product of careful scholarly research and professional consultation.

Apparently, however, that wasn’t good enough for those who ordered the exhibit’s erasure. Instead, we were being told that we must turn our backs on a very real, and valuable, lesson of history: that even while our nation was calling for liberty for all, one of our founding fathers possessed enslaved people and that this contradiction was part of our past.

To me, it begs the questions: Is it anti-American to understand what led our country to where we are today? Are we so delicate now that we can’t stand the truth?

Even worse, in my mind, an Interior Department spokesperson was quoted in the Washington Post piece saying the removal was done “to ensure accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values.”

I’m not sure sanitizing history is a national shared value. It certainly isn’t for me.

It also, apparently, isn’t for U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who ruled just a few days ago that the exhibit must be restored, after the City of Philadelphia had sued.

The George W. Bush-appointed judge wrote: “As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ 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. It does not.” https://apnews.com/article/george-washington-slavery-exhibit-restored-trump-2a32236320f280ba3e647d900c1301b4

The government has not said whether it will appeal but, nevertheless, I can’t help but mourn the erosion of trust that actions like this—and there are many others—have created in the National Park experience. Every time I’ve visited a park or monument, for instance, I’ve walked away with a better understanding of the world as it is, whether it’s history, ecology or the life cycle of a saguaro cactus. Now, however, I might wonder what was left out and what I wasn’t being told.

I think it’s important for us to know that nine people—Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Oney Judge, Moll and Joe—were part of history too.

One day, I hope we won’t be afraid to face the truth of our past—including that it wasn’t always easy or neat or clean.

Peggy Townsend is a former award-winning journalist and the author of the novel, “The Botanist’s Assistant.”