William Penn was the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania. In early January, the National Park Service announced plans to remove a statue of William Penn from a park in Philadelphia located on the site of Penn’s house. Recently released records suggest that President Biden had nothing to do with this plan, contrary to what some suggested, and that it was a decision by the Park Service itself. The plan to remove Penn’s statue was deeply unpopular: It triggered a “torrent of criticism” and as a result, “the National Park Service withdrew” its plan to remove Penn’s statue on January 8, reported the Associated Press. The Park Service claimed that the plan “was released ‘prematurely’ and hadn’t undergone a complete internal review.” But recently released records undercut that claim by the Park Service. The plan was part of a carefully thought-out redesign of Philadelphia’s Welcome Park that followed years of planning and consultations with a Native American group and other stakeholders, and Jim Kenney, the former mayor of Philadelphia, had apparently been aware of it. It was very premeditated.
The Park Service did commit a PR blunder in its press release about the plan, according to a Park Service PR official. Its press release highlighted the removal of Penn’s statue being part of the park’s redesign, rather than just announcing the planned redesign of the park, without calling attention to the removal of Penn’s statue (99% of all commenters opposed removing Penn’s statue). The Park Service’s public affairs officer in Philadelphia had drafted an innocuous press release soliciting public comment about the park’s planned redesign, that wisely didn’t mention removing Penn’s statue, but it was changed by two of his colleagues to highlight the Penn statue’s removal, which triggered public outrage (the two colleagues who did this were acting park superintendent Amnesty Kochanowski and chief of cultural resources Marilou Erhler). The press release then went out, under his name. This PR blunder “frustrated and disappointed” him, as an email he sent reveals. Here is that email:
From: McDougall, Andrew
To: Andrew McDougall
Date: Sunday, January 7, 2024 9:52:45 PMThe Welcome Park press release has blown up. We received over 500 comments on Twitter. It’s being carried by major national news organizations, in a way that reflects badly on the
park. I received 49 emails and 23 voice messages on Sunday. Comments are overwhelmingly, perhaps 99%, opposed to the plan, especially the removal of the Penn statue.I sent a draft press release Wednesday night which I worked very hard on. I kept to the purpose of the press release (to make people aware of the opportunity for comment) and
carefully constructed each sentence.I did not present this as we are tearing down a statue of William Penn. In fact, I didn’t mention the statue at all. That type of detail is for PEPC. I did not suggest our story gets more inclusive by excluding William Penn. People can spot that nonsense from a mile away. I did mention there is an interesting Native American claim to the area which Marilou did not mention at all and I linked the rehab to 2026, like all our other rehabs currently in progress.
It was like I never sent it. It was completely ignored and then completely rewritten by Marilou and then revised by Amnesty. On Friday morning, looking at Marilou’s rewrite and Amnesty’s comments, I sent my original draft again and once again asked Marilou to just add a paragraph. It was not until I received the final edits from Steve and was sending to Adam to post on social media that I realized we were sending out Marilou’s language. I was very frustrated and disappointed.
I knew there were lines which would cause problems. I did not think it would reach this level, but I knew it would create problems. My original said all that needed to be said and set up the public comment period perfectly because I have experience communicating with the public.
I am the Public Affairs Officer and have been communicating for this park, INHP, for 24 years. I understand Philadelphia and I understand people and I know how to write a press release. Just out of common courtesy, I would never completely rewrite someone’s work. It’s extremely arrogant and condescending. But that’s what happened and we once again have a situation that reflects badly on the park. We asked for public comment. I sure hope we plan to honor public sentiment.
Andrew McDougall
Public Affairs Officer
Independence National Historical Park
143 South Third Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Cell: 215-435-4372
www.nps.gov/inde
This records is one of many released by the National Park Service on September 12, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Bader Family Foundation. Earlier, the Department of Interior released 1,330 pages of records as a result of that lawsuit, on May 24, in a release we discussed at this link.
Removing the William Penn statue was extremely unpopular and created political problems for the Biden administration. A senior Pennsylvania Republican Congressman “accused President Joe Biden in a statement of trying to ‘cancel’ William Penn,” calling it “another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history’” reported the Associated Press. A few left-wing academics falsely depicted Penn as an architect of “white supremacy”. La Salle University professor Maureen O’Connell claimed that “white supremacy … started in” Philadelphia with “William Penn’s Holy Experiment.” That’s not true. “William Penn was actually an outspoken advocate for the rights of Native Americans — so much so, in fact, that his name was invoked by Native leaders for generations to come. Penn’s treaty with the Lenape led to 75 years of peace within the colony,” noted Nate Hochman. “Penn went to great lengths to ensure that natives were paid and treated fairly, forged real friendships with many local tribes, and established tribunals to protect their rights,” he observed.
The internal “Briefing Statement” for the plan to remove the statue shows that it was carefully planned by the National Park Service, and the subject of extensive deliberations, and the culmination of years of planning. “The proposed design has been in development for four years with informal collaboration with park neighbors, the City, and tribal nations. Formal tribal consultation was initiated on October 13, 2023″, it says. See pages 347-349 of these emails.
Local, not national, NPS officials developed the plan that would have removed Penn’s statue. Indeed, the National Park Service’s Deputy Director of Operations, Frank Lands, expressed surprise at the plan to remove the William Penn statue, in an email to the regional NPS director in Philadelphia, Gay Vietzke, “Hi Gay, I thought you mentioned during our tour that the Penn statue would remain?” That email is at this link.
Conversely, people perceived the decision to overturn the plan to remove William Penn’s statue as being made in Washington, DC, not Philadelphia. Andrew McDougall was asked, “Who in DC ordered the park to remain as is,” in an email found at this link.
The decision not to remove Penn’s statue after all saddened a progressive Philadelphia Inquirer staffer and apparently the Haudenosaunee group of Indians (the Haudenosaunee were extensively consulted on the redesign that included the Penn statue’s removal). The Inquirer’s Chip Fox wrote to NPS’s McDougall, “As you may know that as an Inquirer photographer, and sometimes writer, I have been following the Haudenosaunee group and the story of Welcome Park/Wampum Lot over the last four years. Mostly I dealt directly with Superintendent MacLeod before she retired. I’m trying to make sense of where things stand after the recent happenings with the William Penn statue. I know the Haudenosaunee is confused as well. I feel bad for them that after 4 years of discussions the superintendent they dealt with is retired, the mayor they met with [Jim Kenney] is no longer in office. We both had understood the Penn statue as well as the Chief Tamanend statue were to find new homes.”
Back in 2022, the Inquirer’s Fox had written about his concern that Welcome Part did not adequately center and highlight Native American history, in an email that was forwarded to the Interior Secretary’s office. He wrote to Sandi Cianculli, president of the Carlisle Indian School Project, who in turn who passed his concerns on to the Interior Department’s Director for Intergovernmental and External Affairs, Shantha Ready Alonso. Fox wrote about how the “Haudenosaunee group seemed frustrated” about delays in the “redesign of the Welcome Park,” and lamented the “erasure” of Native American history…at Independence Park,” and told Cianculli, “If you have a contact in Sec. Haaland’s office I can pass on to them that would be appreciated.” Cianculli did pass it on the the Secretary’s office, to Shantha Ready Alonso there, forwarding it to her in an email that lamented “Indians being erased from history.”
At the following links are the three sets of records released by the National Park Service on September 12: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The letter enclosing these records, and explaining that various portions of these records were redacted under Exemptions 5 and 6 of the Freedom of Information Act, is at this link.
