Wrestling with Justice will create an interpretive framework and exhibits, tours, and programs built with expertise from scholars and diverse perspectives from local communities, that rebalances narratives and contextualizes the history of slavery at Stenton, a c.1730 historic house museum in Philadelphia built for William Penn’s Secretary, James Logan. This project challenges visitors’ prevailing views that slavery was a Southern phenomenon and will address audiences’ void in understanding Northern slavery and consequent racism today. “Wrestling with Justice” also addresses the misconception that Quakers were strictly abolitionists. The Logans enslaved, indentured, and manumitted people, reflecting Quakers’ complex attitudes toward slavery.

 

The updated interpretive plan will support Stenton in illuminating the community that lived and labored on the property in the 18th and 19th centuries, whose stories have been largely neglected during the site’s 120 plus year history as a house museum. In addition to new tours and programs that communicate this history, “Wrestling with Justice” will include new exhibits in Stenton’s garrets, which served as living quarters for enslaved and indentured workers, and rethink the presentation of Stenton’s first and second floors using objects, primary sources, and potentially new interventions throughout the museum and landscape. These interventions will bring presence to the largely invisible labor force, opening visitors’ eyes to all the people who populated the site, not just the owners. In contrast to the historic house tendency to segregate stories of the enslaved in service spaces, Stenton seeks to make slavery visible throughout the house and landscape.