PA History Presents…
The current controversy over the panels relating to slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia is nothing new. In 2002 the National Park Service fought attempts to recognize and name George Washington’s slaves. Various citizen groups, including the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the Ad Hoc Historians, and the Independence Hall Association, spent eight years working together to create the site and interpretation that stood until January 22, 2026, at 6th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. How that happened and why is featured in a special section of the Winter 2026 issue of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Interpreting Slavery in Pennsylvania.”
The section features articles by Philadelphia-area scholars discussing the state of the history of slavery and how it is interpreted in southeast Pennsylvania, including Sharon Ann Holt, Randall Miller, VanJessica Gladney, Carolyn G. F. Wallace, and Kathleen Brown. Dr. Holt, retired professor of history and public history at Penn State Abington and the guest editor for the special section, argues in her introduction, “Collectively, like all teaching, these essays point toward the future. …These bumpy, partial, and inconclusive efforts may be the beginning of something truly world changing.” Randall M. Miller, a retired professor of history at St. Joseph’s University, who wrote the concluding essay for the section “Seeing Slavery in Pennsylvania: A Semiquincentennial Perspective,” adds “The President’s House experience not only led to new interpretation and recognition of the place of slavery in the nation’s founding but also to a demonstration of public history and community engagement that encouraged similar efforts elsewhere.”
A stunning image of the Octavius Catto statue in Philadelphia is featured on the cover. The issue kicks off a year of special features in 2026 issues relating to the Semiquincentennial. One of the articles, “What Happened, and What did not at the President’s House on Independence Mall” by Sharon Ann Holt is being made available for free public access on the Pennsylvania Historical Association’s website.
Pennsylvania History is the quarterly scholarly journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association (PHA). The issue is available online at ProjectMuse and the Scholarly Publishing Collective. Print copies are available through membership in the PHA at: https://pa-history.org/ or individual copies from Penn State Press at $29. For more information contact Linda A. Ries, Editor at: jaggers1952@gmail.com.