Resistance to Racism: The Philadelphia Roots
Linn Washington Jr.
In January, President Trump attempted to erase Philadelphia’s exhibits examining first U.S. President George Washington’s ownership of slaves. The powerful opposition this order was met with — large protests and an ongoing legal battle — is part of a long legacy of resistance to racism in the city known as the birthplace of American democracy.
This legacy includes lesser-known events like the 1787 walkout against discrimination in churches, an action leading to the 1816 creation of the United States’s first independent Black denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in Philadelphia.
The first pamphlet issued by African Americans assailing racism in the news in 1794 and the first petition seeking an end to slavery sent to Congress by African Americans in 1799 both came from Philadelphia.
Philadelphia’s Absalom Jones played a pivotal role in the church walkout, pamphlet and petition. He co-founded the Free African Society in 1787, an organization that provided aid for community needs such as education and burials, and became the first African American ordained priest in the Episcopal Church in 1802.
The resistance firsts continued in Philadelphia well after the United States’ early decades. The 1967 Philadelphia Plan, for instance, was the first U.S. policy to aggressively combat institutional racism in skilled construction jobs.
In the spring of 1963, protestors took to the streets against the exclusion of Black workers from the construction of a junior high school in North Philadelphia. The demonstrations halted construction for nearly three weeks, and Philly police brutally beat protesters. But there was wide community support for the demonstrations, as evidenced in a May 28, 1963 article in The Philadelphia Tribune that quoted participant and famed Philly boxer Stanley “Kitten” Hayward. “We have suffered at the hands of the white man too long,” Hayward said. “Everybody should have equal job opportunity.” The Philadelphia Plan arose from eventual agreements that ended these protests.
Philadelphia’s resistance to racism also resonates internationally. In 1982, for example, Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to divest municipal funds from corporations conducting business in then-apartheid-ruled South Africa, boosting anti-apartheid struggles nationwide.
This legacy of resistance in Philadelphia highlights the reality the United States persistently denies: the existence of institutional racism. Too many Americans embrace the myth that racism is simply an individualized problem, not one societally sanctioned and historically protected by law.
This legacy of resistance in Philadelphia highlights the reality the United States persistently denies: the existence of institutional racism.
The President’s House exhibit, located outside the entrance of the building that houses the iconic Liberty Bell, includes the first memorial about slavery erected on federal property. It opened in 2010 and highlights those nine enslaved men and women.
The memorial is the product of a years-long struggle by local activists and educators to end federal erasure of the history of racism in the city known for issuing the Declaration of Independence. Federal authorities defended their initial opposition to a memorial about slavery with the claim that inclusion of enslavement could confuse visitors about the Liberty Bell.
Trump contends that the President’s House exhibitions “disparage” George Washington. He has voiced disgust about federal museum exhibits that place too much emphasis on “how bad slavery was” — as if brutal enslavement had any good parts.
Denials about racism typically foist half-truths as full facts. Yes, slavery was legal during George Washington’s lifetime, as Trump notes. But Pennsylvania law during Washington’s presidency required freedom for any enslaved person held in the state for more than six months by non-residents. In order to skirt this provision, Washington rotated the slaves held in Philadelphia back to his Virginia plantation.
Two of George and Martha Washington’s enslaved people escaped while in Philadelphia, aided by free Blacks.
The Trump administration’s assault on the President’s House memorial generated international news coverage and sparked resistance from activists and local public officials. The Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, an activist organization at the forefront of defending the memorial, has led multiple protests this year. A leader of ATAC, attorney Michael Coard, castigated Trump’s assault as “blatantly racist destruction” in an interview with Philly Voice.
There is an irony in Trump’s attack on references to slavery at the memorial outside the Liberty Bell building, given that the symbol of American freedom received its name from abolitionists in the 1830s.
—
Trump’s reinvigoration of institutional racism mirrors Congress’ rejection of the December 1799 petition signed by 71 Black Philadelphians. Petitioners requested that free Blacks “be admitted to partake of the liberties and unalienable rights” promised in the Constitution.
Although the petition is remembered as the first request to Congress from African Americans to end slavery, the document’s principal request was congressional protection for free Blacks from being kidnapped and sold into slavery, a practice depicted in the 2013 Academy Award-winning film “12 Years A Slave.”
Typical of evasions around institutional racism, Congress focused on what it would not do instead of what it could do. Congress would not change the Constitution — which protected property, including slaves — or enforce the laws against kidnapping. Congress dismissed the petition, which referenced kidnappers as “[m]enstealers.” In their discussions, the congressmen, many of whom owned slaves, cited the importance of constitutional order, making scant reference to the request for protection from kidnapping.
In early January 1800 deliberations, a South Carolina congressman thanked “God for slavery.” Equally repugnant, a Massachusetts congressman reveled in racist stereotypes, concluding that white abolitionists authored the petition because the Black petitioners “were incapable of writing their names or of reading the petition.”
The petition’s author was aforementioned Black Philadelphian Absalom Jones, who also wrote a 1797 petition to Congress seeking relief for four free Black landowners forced to flee North Carolina after that state’s legalization of re-enslavement. Congress refused that request as well.
In January 1817, nearly 3,000 Blacks gathered at Philadelphia’s historic Mother Bethel Church for what became the first mass protest meeting against racism in the United States. Participants resoundingly opposed a proposal by prominent whites to deport free Blacks to Africa.
Over 200 years later, in February 2025, Black Philadelphians held a mass meeting to develop an agenda to counter the nationwide surge in anti-Blackness, demonstrated by the dismantling of DEI initiatives and the evisceration of voting rights. Agenda items included economic empowerment by buying from Black businesses, improvements to the public education system, increased civic engagement, and increased access to quality health care.
An agenda is important because of the history of disempowering Blacks, agenda initiator Solomon Jones said. “We must build on the successes and failures of those who came before us. We must build using the most powerful tool we have — economics.”
The resolve driving the legacy of resistance to racism in Philadelphia and across America resonates in a remark made by Ona Judge, one of the enslaved who escaped George Washington’s captivity at the President’s House.
Judge, rejecting Washington’s pleas for her return, declared, “I am free now and choose to remain so.”
Until the “justice and equity for all” called for in that 1799 petition is reality, resistance in Philadelphia — as elsewhere — will continue
__________________________________________________________
Linn Washington Jr. is a journalism professor at Temple University and Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program graduate.