Episode Guest
John Garrison Marks – Historian & Author
Speed Round
What is your earliest park memory?
My first park memory is the Grand Canyon. I’m sure I went to others before then, but this was probably when I was 12 or 13 went out west with my family and saw the Grand Canyon.
What made you love the parks?
I just love that they are this public investment in sharing America with back with the American people.
What is your favorite thing about The President’s House?
I think that sometimes the past only has so many answers for us in the present. There is never going to be some piece of evidence that finally and totally settles this question of how to understand Washington and slavery. That work has always been controversial. It still is controversial, but the work of reckoning can only be done by us here in the present.
What else is piquing your curiosity these days?
it’s the 250th anniversary. I’ve been working on this anniversary and helping museums prepare since 2017. And the kind of brewing conflict between how the White House and the Congressional Commission are approaching this anniversary and how states and communities and community members are thinking about what it means to approach our history and tell our story at 250 years is something that I’m really looking forward to watching and participating in over the next couple months.
What is the greatest gift the parks give to us?
I think it’s the opportunity to encounter our story in all of these different dimensions. The way that it can hold up a mirror to the nation and have us better understand not only our past, but hopefully better understand ourselves.
Show Notes & Links
- John Garrison Marks website
- John’s Books
- Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory – Out April 2026 – Pre-order here
- Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas
- Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations: An Atlantic World Anthology
- The President’s House – NPS Site
Episode Transcript
Missy Rentz:
The landscapes of our nation hold the echoes of every footprint ever laid upon them, weaving together the diverse lives and pivotal moments that shaped our common ground. From the visionaries who protected these spaces to the cultures that have always called them home, our parks are a living tapestry of who we were and who we are becoming. This is our story. I am so excited to welcome John Garrison Marks to The Parks Podcast. John is the author of”Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, race, status, and Identity in the Urban Americas.” His second book,”Thy Will Be Done. George Washington’s legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory.” will be out in April, 2026, and he’s currently the VP of Research and Engagement at American Association for State and Local History. John, welcome to the Parks podcast.
John Garrison Marks:
Thank you so much for having me.
Missy Rentz:
You are kicking off this series on”Our Story” where we take a deep dive into a person, place, or event that led to the creation of parks. And today we’re talking about The President’s House. So the President’s house, it’s an exhibit in Independence, national Historical Park that’s in Philadelphia. I’ve loved that. We’re starting with Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, but what is the President’s house and why is this so important to our park system?
John Garrison Marks:
I think it’s an entirely appropriate place to start with a site with all these 1776 connections and with the first president so The President’s House site was the executive mansion when the capital of the nation was in Philadelphia. So this is where George Washington lived in the 1790s when he was serving as the country’s first president. This is where he did a great deal of important work in carrying out the presidency and really establishing the traditions and expectations of what the President of the United States would do and would be. And while he was there living in Philadelphia, he exploited the labor of enslaved people. George Washington is from Virginia. He enslaved other human beings for the entirety of his adult life. He enslaved hundreds of people at his Virginia Plantation, Mount Vernon, and he recognized the very public nature of this role that he was stepping into for the first time. And he recognized the social demands that would be placed on him. He recognized that he would be interacting with people and hosting people and doing all sorts of things that would require a great deal of planning, a great deal of labor. And he fully expected to have the labor of enslaved people serving him while he was President in Philadelphia. And so the president’s house is not only where he lived and carried out so much of the early work of the presidency, it is also where the people he enslaved in Philadelphia lived and worked. And began building lives for themselves away from Virginia and in Philadelphia.
Missy Rentz:
And was it legal for him to enslave people in Pennsylvania?
John Garrison Marks:
That is a complicated question. As Washington learned shortly after relocating to Philadelphia so the, in 1780 before Washington became president, the state of Pennsylvania passed a law to gradually abolish the institution of slavery. This was the first of these laws, but there were subsequent laws in other northern states that began to gradually phase out slavery in the North and Pennsylvania’s law. Among its other provisions, it stated that any enslaved person who resided in Pennsylvania for six months would be entitled to claim their freedom. When George Washington became president and moved to Philadelphia and brought these enslaved people with him, he learned that this law would apply even to him as President. He didn’t necessarily consider himself a resident of Virginia. He was only living there in his in his role as a federal office holder. But he learned that this law would apply to him and it would apply to the people that he enslaved and so Washington, privately and very much secretly, developed a scheme to rotate the people he enslaved out of Philadelphia before they arrived at that six month mark. So he intentionally made sure that they left the state, either went back to Virginia, went across the river to New Jersey, went somewhere else before they reached that six month point, and could legally claim their freedom. So he actively undermined the ability of the people he enslaved to claim freedom. He actively undermined this gradual abolition law of 1780. And what is ironic and really tragic about this scheme to to prevent enslaved people from gaining their freedom is that at the very same time that Washington is doing this, he is writing privately to associates and friends, indicating his support for gradual abolition laws. He says how much that he sees the logic of gradual abolition laws. He hopes that they will spread throughout the United States, hopes that they, that the Virginia legislature will see that this is an important thing for them to do as well. He is writing in opposition to the institution of slavery in all of these ways, always privately, never in his public role as president. But he’s declaring his support for these gradual abolition laws. But part of the reason that he is so familiar with how they work is because he is working so hard to ensure that the people he personally enslaves can never take advantage of them. And this is the complexity and ambiguity of George Washington’s legacy with slavery that we see throughout his life, and especially in the decades after the American Revolution.
Missy Rentz:
It’s so interesting to me because they’re there in Philadelphia writing the,”we, the people,” writing this grand for all, which you and I and everybody listening knows that it wasn’t for everybody, it was for we, the people was particular people. But it’s interesting to me that he could go about this and preach freedom for all yet he had these nine humans enslaved just a block and a half away from Independence Hall.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah I think what’s so interesting about the late 18th century is the extent to which the founding fathers, people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and others, they recognized the inconsistency between their words and their actions, and they talked about how it was troubling to them. And this was something that was part of the conversation at the time. It was in 1775 that the British essayist Samuel Johnson famously asked,”how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes”, right? This is something that was was part of the conversation and Washington really understood that this was a kind of hypocritical stance to take. And he begins, he writes privately about his. Opposition to slavery about his wish to keep enslaved families together about his wish to never purchase another enslaved person. His opposition to, buying and selling enslaved people as you would cattle in the market is what he says. And so he, he recognizes that there is this inconsistency between his words and his deeds when it comes to slavery, but he also just seems to have this real lack of imagination when it comes to what another labor arrangement might look like. So famously he he writes in the years after the revolution that he, intends to never acquire another slave by purchase, right? He intends to never purchase another enslaved person.While he is in Philadelphia, one of the people who escapes from enslavement at the President’s house is Hercules Posey and Hercules Posey is Washington’s chef and he is renowned for his culinary skill. And he is he is recognized by Washington, by people who are visiting and dining with Washington. His skill and his abilities as a chef is recognized, but he, is suffering under the yoke of slavery. He is owned as property and he strikes out on his own for freedom. He escapes from enslavement, from Washington. And after this happens, not only is Washington angry about losing his enslaved property, he writes to a colleague saying, how disappointed he is that because he had vowed to never acquire another enslaved person by purchase. But he says,”this vow I fear, I now must break.” And so because he needed a chef, and it seems like he never imagined the possibility that he would hire and pay a free chef. As soon as the chef that he enslaved runs away and escapes from his control, he immediately says, now I need to buy another enslaved person so that so that I can have this chef. At the same time, he is speaking out privately against slavery and expressing his uneasiness with his own involvement in the institution. He is also denigrating the work of African Americans. He is talking about how he has this really dim view of their capacity for freedom, of their ability to survive in a democratic society and contribute to a democratic society. And so his views of. African descented people don’t necessarily align with his views of the future of slavery in the United States, and that’s something you pretty commonly in the late 18th century. But I think it’s important to remember that this is a different world and a different context than the slavery of 50 or 60 years later. People like Washington and Jefferson are not describing human bondage as a positive good the way pro-slavery Southerners would two or three decades later. They recognize that this is this is not good. They recognize the evils of the slave system the ways that it is corrosive to American society, but they also just can’t imagine a different arrangement.
Missy Rentz:
And yet, they continue to do it. Was there any sort of contention in the Continental Congress because of, all the pro and anti-slavery coming together while they were there?
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah, certainly the slavery issue is a live wire from the very beginning in the United States, and you see all of these all of these places where there is some thought or consideration to talking about slavery directly. And then they always back off whether in the drafting of the declaration or in the framing of the Constitution. So, in Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence, one of the complaints that he is levying against the Crown is their use of the African slave trade and their decision to bring enslaved people to American shores. And this ultimately gets struck from the declaration. And then in the debate about the US Constitution and what that should entail. Slavery famously does not get mentioned by name. And there are many compromises that historians now see as seeding authority to Southern delegates and letting them make decisions about the future of slavery and really delaying any action on the future of slavery in the United States. The most obvious example, the one that is, very clearly explicitly in the text of the Constitution, is regarding the international slave trade, where the Constitution says that they will not, the United States government will not,create any laws ending the international slave trade for at least 20 years. So until 1808 they won’t touch the international slave trade. Washington sees this, but he also recognizes that individual states can do things. They could end their involvement in the slave trade. And for example, he at one point writes to a politician in South Carolina saying that he hopes that the state will end its involvement in slavery. The Port of Charleston is where two out of every five enslaved Africans who are imported directly to the United States come through. And he’s saying he hopes South Carolinian legislatures will see the logic of ending the slave trade. And of course they did not. But there is just this desire throughout the founding and the framing of the Constitution to try to avoid the issue of slavery. There is a kind of recognition among all parties involved at the ability of slavery to tear apart this really fragile union. And that it is something, it is easier to bring these states together if they just set the slavery issue aside as something to be solved for another day.
Missy Rentz:
So I grew up in Virginia, and I remember when there was really the push to start talking about Thomas Jefferson had enslaved people. George Washington had enslaved people. Why is there this hesitancy to take him off this pedestal and admit that he owned and enslaved humans?
John Garrison Marks:
That’s a great question, and it’s one that, that I get into a lot in my forthcoming book. It’s one that Americans have struggled with since Washington was alive. And. Part of the reason is that unlike any other historical figure, more than any other person in American history, Washington functions as a symbol of the nation itself. And so anything that someone perceives as being critical of Washington or as diminishing Washington stature is viewed as a criticism of the nation and. Therefore as a criticism of them by many people. And so there is just not this desire to really get to know George Washington in any sort of real way. More than any other historical figure that I found, washington just remains cast in bronze and marble and people do not want to. Engage with a real and historical version of him. They want to engage with this mythical version of him instead with this symbolic version of him instead. And so people imbue Washington with all of their ideas about what America is. Who Americans are as a people, what we value and the way that they see the nation is often the way that they see Washington. He functions as this sort of endlessly flexible avatar for the nation, and it makes it really difficult to have a conversation about him as a human being. I’ve heard even in, present time in 2025 of there being controversy at a museum for just wanting to say George Washington was a flawed human which is to say was human right. And and. It’s just difficult for people to see Washington in that way, people attach this meaning to him. And to some extent to all of the founding fathers so to, to Jefferson as well, to the other Virginia presidents. But no one gets it to the extent that George Washington does. And so the conversation is often over before it even begins because people are just don’t want to open that door. They don’t want to go down that path. And so what ends up happening is that you have these arguments that are ostensibly about George Washington and his involvement with slavery. But it’s never really a conversation with a goal of better understanding the history and better understanding the nature of his Washington’s involvement with slavery. It’s never really about how to measure and balance his immense contributions to the nation and his incredible leadership of the United States at its founding and his enslavement of other human beings. It’s not really about the history at all. It’s always about something else, right? It’s always about, what do we think America is? How do we see the values of this country and our ability to live up to them?
Missy Rentz:
And I think that there’s that, there’s a question that I have of how can you heal when you’re not willing to acknowledge the man and his successes and this horrible thing that he also did. And I think that’s one thing that I really liked about the President’s House. By title, you think it will be this grand, history of him, much like Mount Vernon. And it is a it was, we’ll get into that, an exhibit about the nine enslaved people that worked for him.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah, and it, it really was an incredible exhibit and I think there are many places where you can go and get the story of Washington, the general, and Washington the president and Washington, the leader. You can get that in lots of places. You can get it in lots of places in Philadelphia. You can, you can see that history in so many ways. And it is, that is the story of Washington that Americans typically receive. And what I found so powerful about the President’s House site. Is that it really made very clear and explicit that Washington was actively enslaving other human beings while he was serving at as president in this place. That this was the home where he lived, but enslaved people, far outnumbered free people in this residence. And it uses that space to tell those stories to tell the stories of the majority of the people who lived in that house and their experiences in Philadelphia their experiences with slavery and with freedom at the time when they were living there. Philadelphia is home to the largest free black population in the country. And they are exposed to that world for the first time. They have autonomy by nature of living in Philadelphia that they didn’t have living in rural Virginia. And they are able to see the possibility of black freedom close up in a way that they never had before. And for people like Hercules Posey and Ona judge, this leads them to escape from slavery and escape from Washington’s control. And it was such a powerful statement to use that site to tell those stories instead of the typical story about Washington. Especially because so many people are visiting Independence National Historical Park, to hear the story of 1776 and to hear the story of the declaration and these soaring ideals that are the foundation of the nation, and to encounter this other story that is happening at the very same time that is in so many ways, the antithesis of the story of liberty and equality and the antithesis of the idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That is really powerful and I think is a incredible way to get people to think in a broader and more complex way about the American past. And that’s the kind of history that people say that they want. Every time you ask Americans what history should look like, how it should be taught in schools, how it should be presented to the public they say they want the full story, they want to hear the good and the bad. They want to decide for themselves how to make meaning out of these things and that they don’t want a a one-sided story, an only celebratory story. And The President’s House site and the slavery exhibit there did a really great job of doing that.
Missy Rentz:
And that house was torn down in 1935, and it wasn’t really. It wasn’t rebuilt. It’s real, it’s an interesting, I’ll show pictures on the website. It’s really interesting how they have the kind of the walls and they use some glass to show the walls and tell the story, but it wasn’t until, in the two thousands that they decided to preserve it and to finally tell this story.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah, it’s really interesting the way that it came about especially because of, as you mentioned, it’s destroyed in the mid 1930s, but just a few years before that is the George Washington Bicentennial. So in 1932, the nation is really celebrating George Washington in all of these ways. That’s when the highway between DC and Mount Vernon is built. That’s when the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey is named after Washington. That’s when Washington gets put on the quarter. They create thousands of busts of Washington and send them to state houses and county courthouses all over the country. So it’s this huge celebration of Washington in 1932 that the story of slavery is not really a part of, and I talk about this in, at length in the book about how black activists and educators really lifted up the story of slavery during the 1932 Washington bicentennial. But then it’s just a couple years later that his house where he was president ends up being torn down and more or less forgotten about for for more than half a century. And it’s not until the late 1990s when there is construction happening at Independence National Historical Park, that they rediscover the foundations of the President’s house and rediscover this history, both Washington’s history at the site and the history of the people who were enslaved there. And there was a real movement among scholars and educators and community members and activists to ensure that this site was redeveloped and was used to tell the story of slavery. In that intervening period between the 1930s and and the late 1990s, early 2000s, we learned nearly everything that we know about the institution of slavery and the history of enslaved people. There is this huge explosion in scholarship, not just of what the institution of slavery was, but of the worlds and lives of, and experiences of, enslaved people. And so that moment in, in the late nineties, early two thousands becomes really important to seize this opportunity to share this new knowledge and this new scholarship with a much wider public and to make sure that they encountered the the history of Washington, the enslave, as well as the history of Washington, the President,
Missy Rentz:
Through this conversation, you and I have both gone back and forth between present and past and referring to The President’s House, and that is because in January, 2026, president Trump had signed an executive order that he wanted. To remove all exhibits that commemorated the history of slavery in our National parks. And on a cold day in January all of it was removed. So it’s a shell, there’s still placards, placard holders, but all the signs are removed. You just see the glue from them. And it’s yet again, trying to remove this history and pretend like it didn’t happen.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah, it was really jarring for me to see the videos of Park Service staff just wrenching these these signs off the walls. And especially, I’ve spent the last five or six years devoting considerable intellectual work to understanding how Americans have thought and fought about Washington’s history with slavery. And to see it happening in real time was was really strange, but also. On some level unsurprising. Americans have been fighting over how to understand and how to talk about slavery’s place in George Washington’s legacy since Washington was still alive. And there has never been a moment in our history that Americans have all agreed on how to do this. So the story that I tell in my book is really one about how this conversation has evolved over time but also. About how it has stayed the same. You see this same conversation happening among pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the 19th century among federal, white, federal planners and black activists and educators in the 20th century. For the Washington bicentennial during the Civil Rights movement, you see it now in fights over education curriculum. And you see it in, in our fights over how this story should be presented at museums and historic sites and those are all things that, that I’ve spent years now exploring. And part of the reason that we’ve never agreed on how this story should be told is because there just isn’t one single answer of how to understand Washington’s relationship with slavery. He spoke out against it in private letters. He freed 123 people that he enslaved in his last will and testament. It wasn’t all of the people at Mount Vernon because more than half of them were legally owned by the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband. But all of the people that George Washington owned outright, set free in his last will and testament, and that is part of this story too. And that dichotomy of Washington as the enslaver of more people than any of his fellow founders, and also as the architect of one of the largest private emancipation before the Civil War is one that has allowed Americans for generations to cherry pick from his history to select which parts of his involvement with the institution they want to lift up in order to make this broader argument about America in order to wield his history with slavery in the political and cultural fights of their day. And today is just another example of that. I think it’s a particularly potent one as we approach the Nation’s 250th anniversary and think about how many people would have seen that exhibit while they are visiting Philadelphia in the summer of 2026. But it is also just the latest iteration of a centuries long fight over how to understand Washington’s legacy with slavery.
Missy Rentz:
and I was there last week and it was interesting because it’s clear they don’t want, they want you, they wanna pretend it doesn’t exist. It was right after this big snowstorm. Everything else was shoveled. This house was not shoveled, and yet it didn’t stop a lot of us from being in the space, in the snow. And what gave me hope was it also sparked great conversation. It sparked a lot of people have taken pictures and put’em up as protests. It’s clear they clean them up regularly because it was sparse when I was there. But the photos are more robust. I have seen videos of people reading the signs that were there on a Saturday so that people can still experience the history. And it’s just very hopeful to me that a big majority of this country is saying it is not okay that you remove our history, and I think that’s really important in this story.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah and that’s part of the historical context here too, that there have always been Americans that want to erase this history, that want to silence this history, that want to ignore Washington’s involvement with slavery. But it is also true that there have always been Americans who insist that we face this history head on, who lifted it up and insist that we reckon with it and the actions of community members in Philadelphia now to put up these others handwritten signs insisting that people confront this history who are using these creative ways to bring this exhibit back for people and to insist that that, visitors to independence Hall are encountering this history has been inspiring. And also has all of these echoes in the American past.
Missy Rentz:
Yeah, John, we end each episode with a speed round of questions. Just answer with what first comes to mind.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Missy Rentz:
What is your first park memory?
John Garrison Marks:
My first park memory is the Grand Canyon. I’m sure I went to others before then, but this was probably when I was 12 or 13 went out west with my family and saw the Grand Canyon.
Missy Rentz:
What made you love the parks?
John Garrison Marks:
I I just love that they are this public investment in sharing America with back with the American people.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite thing about The President’s House?
John Garrison Marks:
I, I love how difficult it is. I love what it asks of visitors. I love that it it demands that we see history for its for its true complexity.
Missy Rentz:
What are some important lessons that we can all take away from The President’s House?
John Garrison Marks:
I think that sometimes the past only has so many answers for us in the present. There is never going to be some piece of evidence that finally and totally settles this question of how to understand Washington and slavery. That work has always been controversial. It still is controversial, but the work of reckoning can only be done by us here in the present.
Missy Rentz:
What else is peaking your curiosity these days?
John Garrison Marks:
it’s the 250th anniversary. I’ve been working on this anniversary and helping museums prepare since 2017. And the kind of brewing conflict between how the White House and the Congressional Commission are approaching this anniversary and how states and communities and community members are thinking about what it means to approach our history and tell our story at 250 years is something that I’m really looking forward to watching and participating in over the next couple months.
Missy Rentz:
What is the greatest gift that the parks give to us?
John Garrison Marks:
I think it’s the opportunity to encounter our story in all of these different dimensions. The way that it can hold up a mirror to the nation and have us better understand not only our past, but hopefully better understand ourselves.
Missy Rentz:
John’s second book.”Thy Will Be Done. George Washington’s Legacy of slavery and the Fight for American Memory” is currently available for pre-order and will be out in April, 2026. John, thank you so much for listening, for sharing the story of the President’s house with us, your knowledge and your experience, and just opening up our story to us in a different way.
John Garrison Marks:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Missy Rentz:
That’s it for today’s episode. Until next time, we’ll see you in the parks. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe to The Parks Podcast on your favorite streaming platform. Follow, like, and share@TheParksPodcast, and learn more by visiting TheParksPodcast.com. Music for this episode is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. I’ll see you in the parks.