Collective Memory, A Philadelphia Story: George Washington and Slavery
1,117 views · Published 3 April 2014 · 1:01:56 · Indexed 30 October 2026
Channel: GBH Forum Network · 2014 · Education
Collective memory is increasingly discussed as an important feature of group behavior, playing a role in ethnic and racial conflict. Marc Howard Ross considers race and slavery in the United States, emphasizing the phenomenon of selective forgetting in the north, where the story of slavery and segregation has only recently been exposed. The specific conflict he describes concerns George Washington and the nine enslaved Africans who lived in the President's house in Philadelphia from 1790-1797. The house that was torn down in the 1830's was a block away from Independence Hall — where the national narrative of freedom and liberty is celebrated. The former slave quarters lie almost directly under the entrance to the Liberty Bell Pavilion. How can the complex histories of freedom and slavery be told together?
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