It was nothing more than a handful of earth, freshly turned and wet from the spring thaw.
And it didn't matter that it was probably topsoil trucked to Independence Mall four years ago, and that the soil around whatever is left of the first President's House was really 10 to 15 feet below her feet.
To Wanda Fatima Sidahmed, it was sacred ground.
"This means a lot to me; this is my family," said Sidahmed, 58, a retired insurance broker from East Oak Lane.
Sidahmed was one of dozens of people - all African Americans - who stopped yesterday to take a handful of earth from the hole dug during the groundbreaking for the memorial to the first presidential residence - and nine slaves who lived there serving the first president.
Sidahmed said that her family has been in Philadelphia's Germantown for four generations but that her ancestors came here from Virginia, as did the nine slaves George Washington brought from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia, the nation's capital from 1790 to 1800.
"We're digging for the truth about the start of this country and the great tragedy of slavery, which affects everything we do in this country today," Mayor Street told about 150 people gathered at the corner of Sixth and Market Streets on Independence Mall for the ceremony with National Park Service officials.
"We don't know what we're going to find," Street said. "But we certainly know we have an obligation to look."
Street then climbed into the cab of a green track hoe and, under the guiding hand of operator Jeffrey Stamps, lowered the toothed bucket and took a foot-deep chunk out of the sod.
For the next three to six weeks, archaeologists will systematically excavate the site at Sixth and Market and document and preserve any items discovered from the era when Washington and second president John Adams lived in the house. Construction of the memorial will then begin, with dedication expected early next year.
For Street and Michael Coard, a Philadelphia lawyer and organizer of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the ceremony vindicated their campaign to persuade the park service to include Washington's slaves in its commemoration of the President's House.
Coard and Street compared it to the type of grass-roots activism that helped end slavery.
The controversy erupted in 2002 after The Inquirer reported that the entrance to the proposed Liberty Bell Center - then unbuilt - would take visitors over the site of the outbuildings where Washington's slaves lived.
