President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered the National Park Service to remove multiple exhibits, signs and materials linked to slavery from its sites, including a photograph of a formerly enslaved man with scars on his back that became a defining image of the Civil War era, according to multiple outlets.
The move follows a Trump executive order from March that directed the Department of the Interior to ensure national parks don’t contain content that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” in a push to focus on the country’s “greatness” instead.
The executive order is part of the administration’s wider push against diversity, equity and inclusion.
The Washington Post was the first to report on the orders.
A National Park Service spokesperson told the Post that materials that “disproportionately emphasize negative aspects” of U.S. history and fail to note “broader context” or “national progress” could “unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it.”
The photo of the formerly enslaved man is known as “The Scourged Back.” The image features a man named Peter Gordon and shows his back heavily scarred from whippings. A reproduction of the photo was on display at Georgia’s Fort Pulaski National Monument, per The New York Times. Fort Pulaski was a former Confederate prison camp later taken over by the Union Army.
The photo — a copy of which is in the National Gallery of Art’s collection in Washington, D.C. — was used to advance the abolitionist movement in the 19th century.
Ken Welsh/Design Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor of history of education, told the Post that Trump’s efforts signal an “enormous increase in federal power and control over the things we learn.”
“Brought to you by the team that says education should be state and local,” he added.
Materials have also been flagged for removal at sites including West Virginia’s Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, where John Brown attempted to lead a slave revolt in 1859, and the President’s House site in Philadelphia, where George Washington lived with several slaves.
Matthew Hatcher via Getty Images
Print Collector via Print Collector/Getty Images
Books on slavery could also be barred at several parks sites in South Carolina, per South Carolina Public Radio. One book flagged for removal is “Shackles,” a children’s picture book by Marjory Wentworth, according to SCPR.
Wentworth questioned how there could be “anything offensive” in her book, which is about her children finding shackles while digging for treasure at their home on Sullivan’s Island, where hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans passed through when brought to colonial America.
Alan Spears, a National Parks Conservation Association historian, criticized the order.
“Great countries don’t hide from their history,” he told SCPR. “They learn from it and when necessary, they confront it.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the status of a photo known as “The Scourged Back” that the National Gallery of Art has. A copy of the photo is in the museum’s collection but is not currently on view. It was last displayed in 2022.