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Trump doesn’t want you to see the scars of slavery [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-16
From national parks to major museums, President Donald Trump has turned erasing America’s often unsavory history into a core part of the MAGA agenda. And now his administration just ordered park officials to pull a famous 1863 photograph of an enslaved man’s whip-scarred back—part of Trump’s broader effort to strip references to slavery and racism from public view.
Four people familiar with the decision told The Washington Post that the National Park Service has begun pulling exhibits featuring “The Scourged Back,” the iconic photograph of Peter, the likely name of an escaped enslaved man whose keloid scars became one of the most powerful pieces of visual evidence for abolitionists during the Civil War. National Park Service officials say they are following Trump’s March executive order, which directed the Interior Department to eliminate “corrosive ideology” that highlights the more uncomfortable side of American history.
“The Scourged Back,” a photograph from 1863, depicts the scarred back of escaped enslaved man likely 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,” National Park Service spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz told People in a statement.
But this erasure of American history goes far beyond a single photograph. Interior officials have reportedly issued new policies ordering employees to flag signage, exhibits, and even gift shop items that reference racism or discrimination.
At Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown led a raid to arm enslaved people, staff have reportedly been told to review displays for compliance. In Philadelphia, the President’s House Site—where George Washington enslaved several workers—has also been found noncompliant with Trump’s orders.
Trump’s cultural purge isn’t limited to parks, either. The White House recently launched a sweeping review of Smithsonian museums to ensure they reflect Trump’s skewed view of American history. 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 exhibits, research centers, and even the National Zoo.
Trump has been explicit about his goals. In an Aug. 19 post on his Truth Social platform, he accused the Smithsonian of being “OUT OF CONTROL” and too focused 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 fits into Trump’s broader pattern of whitewashing history.
The Trump administration reversed the renaming of Fort Gregg-Adams—previously named for two Black veterans—back to Fort Lee, functionally restoring the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, though the administration claims it is now named after Private Fritz Lee, who fought in the Spanish-American War. And last month, the National Park Service announced it would reinstall a statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., five years after protesters toppled it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brushed off monument removals as the work of “woke lemmings.”
People visit the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington in 2019.
The scale of Trump’s moves is striking. His officials have even encouraged park visitors to report noncompliant exhibits—a tactic that has drawn comparisons to government informant programs. According to the Post, most of the reports they received criticized the administration’s policy and praised the existing exhibits.
Taken together, the removals represent an unprecedented federal intervention into how Americans learn their nation’s history. They are also politically useful for Trump, allowing him to portray himself as the defender of “real” America against elites who, in his telling, want to shame the country for its past.
In reality, Trump is simply erasing the truth about our nation’s history. By scrubbing mentions of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism from public spaces, he’s reshaping the nation’s memory and making it easier to pretend those injustices never happened.
This is the MAGA version of history: The brutality of slavery, the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, and the fight for equality is pushed to the margins—and replaced with a glossy, whitewashed story of America. This isn’t just revisionism. It’s an attempt to rewrite the country’s story from the ground up.
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