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Unpaid Black Labor In The Past Equals Paid Black Labor In The Present!

• George Washington enslaved 316 of our Black fathers and mothers in brutal bondage at his Mt. Vernon, VA plantation where he forced them to labor without pay.
• He did the same to 9 of those 316 when he transported them to the President’s House here in Philadelphia at the current site of the new Liberty Bell Center at 6th & Market. Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) and others won a nearly five-year battle to force the federal government to commemorate those 9 and the rest of our enslaved ancestors in America.
• ATAC now demands that today’s free Black sons and daughters of yesterday’s enslaved Black fathers and mothers get equitably “substantial, significant, and prominent” participation in all employment contracts connected with the President’s House/Slavery Commemoration project.
• Even Philadelphia City Council in 2002 adopted resolution 020521 “calling upon the National Park Service (and Independence National Historical Park) 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.”
• ATAC requests that all interested Black archeologists, architects, designers, construction workers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, laborers, and others attend the following meeting to find out how they can be selected to participate in this historic project: