ATAC Position Paper

What Is ATAC

ATAC is a broad-based coalition of African historians, activists, attorneys, elected officials, religious leaders, media personalities, and other tax-paying voters who are the descendants of the victims of the greatest holocaust in the history of humankind. ATAC spearheaded a voluminous letter writing campaign and is accumulating a vast amount of signatures in its continuing petition drive, totaling more than 15,000.   ATAC held large and vocal demonstrations on July 3, 2002, July 3, 2003, July 3, 2004, and July 1, 2005.   In connection with the projected $4.5 million cost of the President’s House plan, ATAC provided substantial documentation to U.S. House Appropriations Committee member Congressman Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, who was instrumental in securing an amendment to the Interior Department’s 2003 budget requiring the NPS (and INHP) to develop plans for the President’s House site, including an “appropriate commemoration” of the nine enslaved African descendants there. In August 2005, primarily through the efforts of Congressman Fattah along with the assistance of Congressman Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, $3.6 million in federal funding was made available for the site and the commemoration. Previously, in October 2003, ATAC also helped to secure $1.5 million from Mayor John Street of Philadelphia toward the funding of the commemorative project.

What ATAC Requires

Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) and others recently won a relentless four year battle to persuade the National Park Service (NPS) and Independence National Historical Park (INHP) to finally agree to the creation of a preeminent commemorative project- including slave quarters highlighting- on the grounds of the President’s House site. This project is to honor primarily the nine (known) African descendants who were enslaved by President George Washington at America’s first “White House,” which was located at the current site of the new Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia at Sixth and Market Streets. Moreover, this project is to include substantial, significant, and prominent participation from the African American community as architects, construction workers, historians, etc. In fact, this inclusion is consistent with Philadelphia City Council’s 2002 resolution number 020521 “calling upon the National Park Service (and INHP) to ensure equitable economic participation in opportunities arising from the… project and the appropriate memorializing of the… human beings of African descent held in bondage at that site.”

Why ATAC Requires It

ATAC requires the commemorative project because justice demands it. Justice demands it because our ancestors as forced laborers transformed America into the economic world power that it remains today, because our ancestors died for America in all of its wars, and because our ancestors had their freedom, culture, family, language, land, religion, name, and often their sanity, limbs, and even lives ruthlessly stripped from them for three centuries by America (and other European-initiated slave trading countries) in a manner unlike anything ever experienced in the history of humankind. ATAC also requires the commemorative project because it an essential step toward telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about American history.