The National Liberty Museum: A Tour of Free Speech

My favorite image from the museum. Doesn't this capture so much?

I recently made a trip to Philadelphia for the express purpose of visiting the National Liberty Museum after hearing about an exhibit on the radio. If that's not nerdy enough for you, a close friend flew up to join me, meaning that, yes, we built a girls' weekend around a museum exhibit.

But this wasn't just any exhibit. It was Let’s Talk: Confronting What Divides Us, the final exhibition in the museum's The Year of Free Speech - and it was very much worth the trip.

If you're an exhibitions curator, please forgive me when I confess that I'm not ordinarily the type of visitor to read all of the placards and explanatory material.

At the National Liberty Museum, I did. Every. Single. One.

You have until March 2, 2026 to go in person - and I hope you do. For now, this post shares some of the highlights from a space dedicated to exploring what divides and unites us. Spoiler alert: there's more of the latter than the former, as you begin to see in the image below:

Give yourself a few moments to really digest these images.

When you do, you'll see two things:

1) Saying "Half of all Americans voted for _____ for president" is incorrect. Neither major candidate in 2024 received a full 1/3 of the votes of eligible voters.

2) Our perceptions and reality are far apart; our actual views are not. See the chasm in the first and third images on the right? That's how far apart we think we are. The second and fourth images show how much overlap exists in our actual views.

"But that can't happen here!" I've heard that phrase a lot in the past many years, but less so in the past few months.

I'd make one slight amendment to the above placard:

"Our words and stories have the power to teach and to learn, to build and to destroy, and, most importantly, to create connections."

Another exhibit included a wide range of thought-provoking art installations. Pictures don't do most justice, but I include one example here made from a wide array of campaign posters:

"Unwritten norms of civility. Tolerance of dissent. Without these, civility turns to hateful speech, hateful speech to violence. Violence breaks the republic, and a broken republic is an autocrat's dream."

As an organization that helps people "build their civic muscle," this reference to a "gym for working out your dialogue muscles" delighted me.

"Us v. Them" is not a new phenomenon.

The human brain is a magical thing. After all, what other species could develop the wheel, air travel, and microwave popcorn? We are wired in ways that allow us to be bold and yield incredible creativity. But default wiring designed to keep us safe, if left unchecked, can backfire in dangerous ways.

In case the text on the two lower left panels above is too small to read, I repeat it here:

"Hate or animosity between groups often begins when we assume that 'They are not like us.' If we value our differences and find shared goals, we may be able to maintain dialogue. However, if we jum p to 'They deserve less,' we start a long battle. Us Versus Them, a timeless struggle rooted in distrust and fear of 'the other,' often intensifies when an unequal distribution of resources exists.

"Today, tribalism often leads to partisan politics and government standstills. [30 days and counting....] Banding together with like-minded people can feel great, but in a complex world, we will always encounter people who are not like us. How do you respond when meeting someone whose ideas differ from yours? Do you pause and notice what might be new or interesting about their perspective? Or do you get defensive and argue, or disengage to find those more like you?"

A wise friend of mine often quips, "The soft skills are the hard skills." People often assume that because they can talk, they can communicate. Nope, sorry. It's not that easy. Constructive conversation takes skills and, just like muscle, those skills take time and practice to build. This display shares five coaching tips.

 While we humans always need human connection, sometimes practicing the hard stuff with something that doesn't have feelings is a good idea. Interactive parts of the exhibit, built in collaboration with TimeLooper, made it possible to debate current issues without tempers flaring. After all, AI doesn't have toes to be stepped on!

Great to see our friends from More Like US featured in the exhibit!

You can learn more about More Like US and the CAST framework in our webinar with executive director, James Coan:

The museum features another thing close to my heart: documentary film. Jesters and Fools combines laughter and science as it explores how many media outlets create the false idea that we in America are too fractured to ever come back together.

In addition to the delightful wit and snark of several comedians, the film includes research of Chris Bail, a Duke University social scientist. This clip gives you a sense of the short film:

There's also an entire exhibit dedicated to people throughout history who used the power of their words - and actions - to bend the arc of history toward justice. As someone who recently read a book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's stance on the role of the church in resisting an unjust state, this example caught my eye:

Have you seen the exhibit - or do you plan to go? I'd love to hear what you think.

Piper Hendricks, CEO

October 2025

If you'd like more insight on addressing media bias and misinformation, our webinars with Clare Ashcraft from AllSides and Dr. Kristy Roschke from Vanderbilt University, respectively, will be of interest: