For example, one site, at the National Constitution Center, exhibits for the first time in history the first written protest against slavery. This document, written in 1688 by the Germantown Friends Monthly Meeting, will be on public display only until Sept. 3, according to museum staff.
Announced yesterday on Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, Quest for Freedom also is an initiative that the city hopes will expand its tourism base.
The city also announced that a task force with a 60-day deadline has been appointed to develop a plan to make the President's House at Sixth and Market Streets, where George Washington kept slaves, more accessible to the public viewing the excavation now in progress.
Mayor Street, who was among city officials at the National Constitution Center yesterday to announce the Quest for Freedom project said: "This is also a great source of economics for us. There are literally thousands - almost 60,000 people - in our city who are employed in the hospitality industry."
Although there are no official projections of how much money the program is expected to raise through increased tourism, the amount of money brought into the city from leisure tourists is considerable, according to the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC).
Patricia Washington, vice president of grants and development for GPTMC, said statistics from 2005 show that 20 percent of 27.3 million annual visitors to the city were leisure tourists, who spent an aggregate of $16.4 million per day.
Nancy Sanders, an author of children's books, traveled to Philadelphia from California this week to visit the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church with her husband and two sons. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass once gave a speech from its pulpit.
