From nationwide parks to main museums, President Donald Trump has turned erasing America’s usually unsavory historical past right into a core a part of the MAGA agenda. And now his administration simply ordered park officers to drag a well-known 1863 {photograph} of an enslaved man’s whip-scarred again—a part of Trump’s broader effort to strip references to slavery and racism from public view.
4 folks accustomed to the choice instructed The Washington Put up that the Nationwide Park Service has begun pulling displays that includes “The Scourged Back,” the enduring {photograph} of Peter, the seemingly title of an escaped enslaved man whose keloid scars turned one of the vital highly effective items of visible proof for abolitionists throughout the Civil Battle. Nationwide Park Service officers say they’re following Trump’s March government order, which directed the Inside Division to eradicate “corrosive ideology” that highlights the extra uncomfortable aspect of American historical past.
“The Scourged Back,” {a photograph} from 1863, depicts the scarred again of escaped enslaved man seemingly named Peter.
“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,” Nationwide Park Service spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz instructed Individuals in an announcement.
However this erasure of American historical past goes far past a single {photograph}. Inside officers have reportedly issued new insurance policies ordering staff to flag signage, displays, and even present store gadgets that reference racism or discrimination.
At Harpers Ferry Nationwide Historic Park in West Virginia, the place abolitionist John Brown led a raid to arm enslaved folks, employees have reportedly been instructed to evaluate shows for compliance. In Philadelphia, the President’s Home Web site—the place George Washington enslaved a number of staff—has additionally been discovered noncompliant with Trump’s orders.
Trump’s cultural purge isn’t restricted to parks, both. The White Home just lately launched a sweeping evaluate of Smithsonian museums to make sure they mirror Trump’s skewed view of American historical past. His March 27 order directs Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to strip “divisive, race-centered ideology” from displays, analysis facilities, and even the Nationwide Zoo.
Trump has been specific about his targets. In an Aug. 19 submit on his Reality Social platform, he accused the Smithsonian of being “OUT OF CONTROL” and too centered on how “horrible our Country is.”
“Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote, vowing to “go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities.”
This push suits into Trump’s broader sample of whitewashing historical past.
The Trump administration reversed the renaming of Fort Gregg-Adams—beforehand named for 2 Black veterans—again to Fort Lee, functionally restoring the title of Accomplice Gen. Robert E. Lee, although the administration claims it’s now named after Non-public Fritz Lee, who fought within the Spanish-American Battle. And final month, the Nationwide Park Service introduced it could reinstall a statue of Accomplice Gen. Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., 5 years after protesters toppled it. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth disregarded monument removals because the work of “woke lemmings.”
Individuals go to the Smithsonian Museum of American Historical past in Washington in 2019.
The dimensions of Trump’s strikes is putting. His officers have even inspired park guests to report noncompliant displays—a tactic that has drawn comparisons to authorities informant packages. In keeping with the Put up, a lot of the stories they acquired criticized the administration’s coverage and praised the prevailing displays.
Taken collectively, the removals characterize an unprecedented federal intervention into how People study their nation’s historical past. They’re additionally politically helpful for Trump, permitting him to painting himself because the defender of “real” America in opposition to elites who, in his telling, wish to disgrace the nation for its previous.
In actuality, Trump is just erasing the reality about our nation’s historical past. By scrubbing mentions of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism from public areas, he’s reshaping the nation’s reminiscence and making it simpler to faux these injustices by no means occurred.
That is the MAGA model of historical past: The brutality of slavery, the battle of the Civil Rights Motion, and the combat for equality is pushed to the margins—and changed with a shiny, whitewashed story of America. This isn’t simply revisionism. It’s an try to rewrite the nation’s story from the bottom up.
