The history of enslavement cannot be erased

In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “ensure” that content which “inappropriately disparages” U.S. individuals past or living ceases to exist at national parks, including Independence National Historical Park (INHP) in Philadelphia. 

In 2026, the INHP will be at the center of the celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary. Burgum issued his own directive to eliminate depictions at Park Service sites “that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

All 433 National Park Service installations and other Interior Department holdings were given a mid-September deadline to rid exhibits, signs, films and bookstores of statements and literature determined by Burgum and Trump to be out of compliance. Trump has made it clear that race is the focus of his crusade against “wokeness.” In a social media post, Trump targeted the Smithsonian Institution in particular for unduly focusing on “how bad slavery was.” (New York Times, Aug. 19)

But references to slavery are not Trump’s only targets. Native News Online noted Sept. 8 that the National Museum of the American Indian — with locations in New York City and Washington, D.C. — is one of eight Smithsonian institutions under audit with Trump’s order. The goal is to whitewash history, to only glorify the crimes of white European settler colonialists.

The Indigenous news service reported that at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., in early September, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) gave voice to a far-right, settler-colonial claim that “America was founded by and intended for Europeans.” 

Alluding to the Manifest Destiny doctrine, Schmitt claimed: “We’re a nation of settlers, explorers and pioneers — born on the ocean waters that carried the first ships to our shores and forged in the crucible of a wild frontier. Our people tamed a continent, built a civilization from the wilderness and wrote our nation’s name in history.”

But the true history that Trump, Schmitt and other neocons want to wipe away is the genocidal attacks that these settler colonialists carried out against Indigenous peoples, equating Indigenous resistance as “barbarism,” much like Israel does today with the Palestinian Resistance.

According to the Washington Post on Sept.15, National Park Service (NPS) officials are broadly interpreting Trump’s directive, not to just target slavery or the genocide of Indigenous people, but information on racism, sexism and LGBTQIA2S+ rights as well. Exhibits on issues like climate change and rising sea levels, including those at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, are also under review.

President’s House in Philadelphia

While historians were aware that the first U.S. President George Washington enslaved 316 people at his Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia, lesser known was that Washington brought nine enslaved Africans to Philadelphia, where slavery was illegal. 

When the NPS made the decision to relocate the Liberty Bell in 2002, officials chose to ignore the full history of the site, including the areas where the nine enslaved individuals were quartered behind Washington’s house. 

In response, Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) — under the leadership of progressive Black attorney Michael Coard — organized, fought, protested, held meetings and demonstrated to compel the INHP to agree to the creation of a prominent Slavery Memorial. The memorial highlights the President’s House project, which opened in 2010 and was transferred to INHP ownership in 2015.

The site’s panels tell the stories of the nine enslaved Africans who lived and worked there. One highlights Washington’s signing of the infamous 1793 Fugitive Slave Act that put those who escaped enslavement at risk of recapture for the rest of their lives. Artwork on this display shows Washington’s hands holding a quill signing the Act, with a posse of white men with clubs and guns in the background shooting at four Black men escaping from enslavement. 

The exhibit, on Trump’s targeted list, focuses on the contradictory coexistence of liberty for propertied white men and enslavement for Africans. A panel called “Life Under Slavery” illustrates the whippings, deprivation of food, clothing and shelter, beatings, torture and rapes endured by enslaved people. Other displays on Trump’s list include “The Dirty Business of Slavery” and “The House and the People Who Worked & Lived in It.”

Upon learning of the threat to the panels at the President’s House, ATAC began organizing resistance through demonstrations starting on Aug. 2, a town hall meeting at the historic Zion Baptist Church on Sept. 3 and more recent rallies and vigils, including one while Burgum was visiting the site. 

Dozens of preservation and historical organizations from the Philadelphia area signed a letter to Burgum opposing any alterations. Visit Philadelphia, one of the main organizations planning for the 2026 celebrations, asserts it would find a new, privately-owned location for any content that was removed from the President’s House.

Resistance at Harper’s Ferry

John Brown and his army of 21 armed men captured the U.S. Military Armory in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859 planning to arm African Americans, free and enslaved. The U.S. army, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, was too strong and crushed the brave fighters. They hung John Brown after a facade of a trial in nearby Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia). Before his execution, Brown handed a note to an officer which stated, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.”

This vital story of the brutality of slavery and the many sacrifices made to end it can be viewed in Harper’s Ferry. Just walking on the hallowed grounds is inspiring and informative. Also in Harper’s Ferry is Storer University, one of the first African American colleges started during Radical Black Reconstruction. The Niagara Movement, led by African American historian, W. E. B. Du Bois, held its inaugural meeting there in 1906. 

Trump’s white supremacist force now running the capitalist state wants the National Park Service to not just remove anything that shows the brutality of slavery, but also anything that illustrates the courageous fightback to end the cruelty of human bondage, including John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. The censorship of history must be combatted. Protests against the attempted erasure of history have been held at Harper’s Ferry, including one on Sept. 19.

An attempt to whitewash U.S. history

Another site under review is the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, on the location of Pinckney’s massive plantation that enslaved nearly 2,000 people. Pinckney was one of South Carolina’s four signers to the U.S. Constitution, and later a member of Congress. 

Targeted objects include half a dozen bookstore offerings, including autobiographies of enslaved people. At Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in Georgia, an exhibit on the “Causes of the Civil War” is under review. At the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a panel referring to the “harsh circumstance of enslavement” is the target.

Learning the real history of the U.S. is very important. Whitewashing that history also means wiping out the histories of resistance. People have never given up, no matter how ruthless the rich ruling class is in its drive to continue the plundering of the whole world!