Exhibitions and signs about slavery are being removed from multiple national parks as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to strip away negative aspects of U.S. history, according to a report.
The crackdown has led to a famed Civil War–era photo showing the horrifically scarred back of a formerly enslaved Black man being ordered to be taken from one national park, officials told The Washington Post.
At Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, more than 30 signs documenting the hostility formerly enslaved people faced from white people, as well as other examples of racial discrimination, have reportedly been slated for removal.
‘Elsewhere, exhibits at the site of George Washington’s former home in Philadelphia, where the first U.S. president kept nine enslaved people, are also said to fall foul of Trump’s demands, a source told the Post.
Unnamed officials said the steps to remove the signs and photos are in line with Trump’s executive order in March to restore “truth and sanity” to American history by removing references that frame it as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
The order demanded the Interior Department take down monuments, statues, signs, or other markers that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” including those from colonial times.
The Post reported that the order is being interpreted “broadly” to cover material addressing racism, sexism, slavery, LGBTQ rights, or persecution of Indigenous people.
This has seen Park Service officials being told to take down “The Scourged Back,” a shocking photo taken in 1863 showing the deep scars of a Black man believed to be named Peter Gordon, who was repeatedly whipped before he escaped slavery.
Anne Cross, a scholar of 19th-Century photography at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, said the image was pivotal in revealing the horrors of slavery in the U.S. as it revealed to people “realities they had never seen with their own eyes before.”
“And in many cases it altered their political opinions about the need to defeat the Confederacy and preserve the Union,” Cross told the Post.
In a statement, Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz said all signage is under review.
“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Pawlitz said.
Trump’s campaign against what he has called “corrosive ideology” promoted by the Biden administration has seen him at war with the Smithsonian over complaints its museums are too focused on “how bad slavery was” in America.
In addition, the Trump administration has ordered the reinstallation of a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike, which was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, in Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon is also restoring a portrait of General Robert E. Lee, which includes an enslaved Black man guiding a horse, at the West Point library three years after Congress mandated the removal of Confederate leaders’ names and images from military bases.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the National Park Service for comment.
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