Congratulating the Avenging The Ancestors Coalition and its founder Michael Coard, Esq. on the 15th Anniversary of the grand opening of the Slavery Memorial at the President's House at Sixth and Market Streets.

Congratulating the Avenging The Ancestors Coalition and its founder Michael Coard, Esq. on the 15 th Anniversary of the grand opening of the Slavery Memorial at the President’s House at Sixth and Market Streets. WHEREAS, The President’s House at Sixth and Market Streets marks the location where the first Presidents, George Washington and John Adams, conducted executive business of the United States in Philadelphia; and WHEREAS, The site is also where nine African American men and women were enslaved by Washington, including Ona Judge, Moll, Austin, Hercules, Richmond, Giles, Paris, Christopher Sheels, and Joe. For decades, the history of slavery at the nation’s founding went unacknowledged, until community advocates fought to illuminate the truth of the site and the lives of the enslaved; and WHEREAS, Attorney and advocate Michael Coard, Esq. founded The Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC), leading a multi-year campaign demanding the National Park Service and Independence National Historic Park fully recognize the individuals connected to the President’s House Site; and WHEREAS, Under Coard’s leadership, ATAC collaborated with historians and community organizers and applied legal pressures, resulting in the Slavery Memorial at the President’s House opening in 2010 as a groundbreaking site that recognizes the history of early presidency and the presence of slavery in Philadelphia; and WHEREAS, For the last fifteen years the memorial has served as a public education space, …