It's consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story.

We're just a few weeks away from celebrating the nation's 250th birthday.

So I went to the city called the Birthplace of America, Philadelphia.

It was right here at Independence Hall that the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Philadelphia became the nation's first capital, George Washington, its first president.

He lived a block away.

For decades and decades, people have come to these few old city blocks, all cobblestone and red brick, to steep themselves in this

history of American freedom. But producer Henry Larson and I came because of a battle playing

out right now over that history, specifically over whether the National Park Service, which

runs these historic sites, should have to tell the stories of the black people who are part of it.

We're standing here looking at this beautiful rear facade of Independence Hall,

and then you turn around, and just a few steps away is the House,

where George Washington, when he was president during those early years, lived.

And not only where he lived, but where he enslaved nine people.

Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Shields, Richmond, Giles, only judge.

Michael Cord is reading their names, etched onto a wall at the site of Washington's house.

Cords a lawyer and an activist, and like many Philadelphians, he was stunned in the early

2000s when a local historian unearthed records that George and Martha Washington had brought

nine slaves to work for them here.

Many of us knew that he enslaved, but not many knew that nine were held right here in Philadelphia.

So I was enraged. I put together a group of local activists.

He called it the avenging the Ancestors Coalition.

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