Trump officials have reportedly ordered the removal of a famous image of a formerly enslaved man from a Georgia national monument where the United States Army toppled a Confederate garrison during the Civil War.
The officials ordered the removal of a reproduction of “The Scourged Back” (1863), a photograph of a self-emancipated formerly enslaved man known only as Peter, from Fort Pulaski National Monument in Chatham County, according to internal emails and anonymous sources cited by the New York Times. News of the image’s ordered removal at an unnamed site was first reported by the Washington Post on Monday, September 15, and the location was confirmed by the New York Times on Tuesday morning.
The photo was taken in 1863, after Peter escaped from a Louisiana plantation and enlisted in the Union forces, and depicts him angled away from the camera, with an array of shocking scars on his back resulting from lashings. The image, testifying to the sheer terror of slavery, became a galvanizing abolitionist cry and was widely circulated in Harper’s Weekly.
It is unclear where the reproduced image was on view at the Fort Pulaski National Monument. After the Union victory, the site became a destination for individuals seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad. Once they reached the fort, many formerly enslaved men formed the Black troop divisions, according to the National Park Service (NPS), and later served in South Carolina.
The NPS lists 38 sites under its stewardship that have ties to the United States’s history of slavery, including the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Abraham Lincoln’s historic home, and the Congaree National Park in South Carolina, where enslaved individuals sought refuge in the wilderness.
In the same March executive order that targeted “race-centered ideology” in the Smithsonian Institution, Trump ordered the Secretary of the Interior to ensure that monuments in its jurisdiction “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.” The Department of the Interior (DOI), which oversees the NPS, notified national park employees in June that “inappropriate content” would be modified by tomorrow, September 17.
A spokesperson for the DOI said in a statement to Hyperallergic that reports of exhibit removals were “false claims that are not grounded in verified facts.” The DOI spokesperson said:
The Washington Post continues to rely on anonymous sources and unverified claims to drive a false narrative. We caution against reporting on false claims that are not grounded in verified facts. In accordance with Secretary’s Order No. 3431, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, all interpretive signage in national parks is under review. Anyone reporting on anything but the facts is spreading misinformation to the American people.
According to the New York Times, Trump officials also ordered the removal of a sign criticizing the “Lost Cause” myth from Manassas National Battlefield Park, a Civil War battleground where Confederates defeated the Union army in 1861 and ’62. The “Lost Cause” refers to an interpretation of the Civil War that denies the role of slavery as its central cause and claims that the institution of slavery was benevolent.
The scrutinized sign accompanies a laudatory monument of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson riding a horse, created by the sculptor Joseph Pollia and unveiled in 1940. The text on the sign, which was installed under the Biden administration in 2024, was critical of the monument’s unveiling. Trump has criticized the Biden administration for promoting “corrosive ideology” within the national parks and museums.
Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia was also reportedly ordered to alter a display addressing nine individuals enslaved by George Washington. The park was named in Trump’s March directive.
A spokesperson for the DOI declined to comment further following the New York Times’s reporting of the locations of the exhibit removals.
The reported orders follow a directive from the Trump administration to remove the “T” (trans) and “Q” (queer) from the LGBTQ+ acronym on the Stonewall National Monument website, as well as references to bisexuality. Last month, Yosemite National Park in California fired an employee after they hung a Trans Pride flag at the park’s El Capitan site.