Trump Admin Purges National Parks Of Slavery Exhibits Including Iconic ‘The Scourged Back’ Photo

In today’s episode of Trump Makes American History Easy On White People Again, the Trump administration has reportedly ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, including the iconic portrait of a runaway slave’s severely whipped back, titled “The Scourged Back,” according to sources familiar with what’s going on in this backward federal administration.

From The Washington Post:

The individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said the removals were in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.

Following Trump’s order, Interior Department officials issued policies ordering agency employees to report any information, including signage and gift shop items, that might be out of compliance.Trump officials also launched an effort asking park visitors to report offending material, but they mostly received criticisms of the administration and praise for the parks.

The latest orders include removing information at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, two people familiar with the matter said, where the abolitionist John Brown led a raid seeking to arm slaves for a revolt. 

 Park Service officials reportedly singled out “The Scourged Back” and ordered its removal at one national park, which the anonymous sources did not name.

“The Scourged Back,” a photo taken in 1863 of a whipped enslaved person historians believe was named Peter Gordon, is one of the most iconic and well-known portraits in all of Black American history. This is like if Trump, for whatever reason, decided to purge national parks of Renaissance-era art, and he decided to start with the Mona Lisa.

“The bodies of enslaved people like Peter Gordon revealed to them realities they had never seen with their own eyes before,” Anne Cross, a scholar of 19th-century photography at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, told the Post. “And in many cases it altered their political opinions about the need to defeat the Confederacy and preserve the Union.”

Predictably, the Park Service is running with the same tired narrative the White House has defaulted to in whitesplaining why it’s moving to force the Smithsonian to do away with exhibits that teach about slavery, brutality during the Civil Rights Movement, race massacres, genocide, and other examples of white violence and systemic racism against Black people and people of color. (*gestures widely towards literally all of U.S. history*)

Basically, the White House has white people deciding how much Black history is too much Black history.

“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,” Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz said in a statement.

More from the Post:

At Harpers Ferry, staff flagged more than 30 signs, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Post, that highlight information potentially in violation of Trump’s policy. They include signs referring to racial discrimination and the hostility of White people to people who were formerly enslaved.

Park Service officials marked the submission as “out of compliance,” with staff now expected to cover up parts of signs or remove them, the person said.

Mind you, this is the same administration that has made it a priority to restore all honors to the Confederacy, either by replacing Confederate monuments that were torn down, or restoring the original names of military forts that previously underwent name changes so that they would not celebrate people who fought and campaigned to keep Black people in intergenerational bondage and servitude.

Here’s what I wrote about that previously:

In 2025, the Republican Party is the party of slavery. It is the red states that recognize Confederate holidays. It is Republican voters who call themselves patriots while flying the flag of traitors and slavery advocates. It is Republican leaders who would rather teach students that enslaved people benefited from being slaves, and that there are “opposing viewpoints” that should be taught so that the transatlantic slave trade isn’t presented as an “oppressor vs. oppressed” system, “based solely on race or ethnicity,” simply because that’s exactly what it was.

So, basically, telling the truth about the institution of chattel slavery is “corrosive ideology,” but honoring the treasonous slavers and warriors for slavery is fine.

You know — I’m really starting to suspect that the Trump administration is a white supremacist organization, and, unless it has its way, that’s how history will remember it.

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