With history under attack, it’s crucial to bear witness.
Standing at the peak of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, you can’t help but feel the weight of the past.
Looking down the roadway across the Alabama River in Selma, try to imagine marching into a crowd of men on horseback with nightsticks. The violence that followed on a day now called “Bloody Sunday” spurred the passage of the 1965 U.S. Voting Rights Act. But that history, recounted at visitor centers along the Selma To Montgomery National Historic Trail, is now under threat.
The federal government is evaluating signs and displays at the nation’s 433 National Park Service units as part of an effort to change how America’s story is told. Already, several exhibits have been altered, and thousands of others are under review, including those on the Selma trail.
1.Michael Scott Milner/Shutterstock; 2.fotoguy22/iStock
Changes are already visible. At Muir Woods National Monument in California, contributions of women conservationists and indigenous people were removed from an interpretive sign. At Acadia National Park in Maine, information panels discussing climate change were removed.
Modifications aren’t limited to parks. In early November, it was reported that the American Netherlands Cemetery, which is run by the federal American Battle Monuments Commission, took down two signs honoring the contributions of Black servicemen during World War II.
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All this follows the March issuance of the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order by the Trump administration. That led the National Park Service to post a QR code at its sites asking the public to report signs or displays that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Park employees also conducted their own inventory of signs that could be out of compliance.
It’s unclear how painful moments from our past fit into this new initiative. Would the lynching and mutilation of a 14-year-old boy—documented by the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Sumner, Mississippi—be considered negative? What about the hatred spewed at the nine Black students integrating an all-White school, recounted at Arkansas’ Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site?
The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment. But in a statement to the Washington Post, a spokesperson confirmed that all signage is under review. “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,” the official said.
But conservation advocates say it’s necessary to confront painful moments in the past. For Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, these sites are important because they document our complexities.
“Our country has had its ups and downs. We were started by a revolution. We had a civil war. We had civil rights issues, women’s rights issues, Indigenous issues. This defined us as a nation, and the fact that we still exist as a democracy is something we’re very proud of,” she says. “Our parks are the living classrooms that tell these stories.”
But more changes may be coming, says a volunteer with Resistance Rangers, a group of more than 1,000 National Park Service employees. “There’s a possibility for a massive censorship across the country,” said the ranger, who was speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation.
The ranger said a database lists thousands of signs to be reviewed, including many touching on civil rights. If changes are made, they may be subtle. “They’re not going to erase Martin Luther King, Jr. They’re going to erase a word here and there. They’ll take down a picture.”
The parks conservation group has seen a small portion of the federal database. One entry from Selma appears to flag for review scripts from a film or multimedia presentation. In a comment section, a park employee notes: “While the statements and scripts are historically accurate and directly from firsthand accounts, the information may be perceived as disparaging by individuals who are less familiar with the history of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Another listing in the database mentions displays at Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve, located on former plantations in Jacksonville, Florida. Notations suggest that signs at the federal site could be easily changed to remove the names of enslavers, and to delete a reference noting that in 1804, runaway slaves were publicly whipped.
With the fear that such information may be lost, a group of librarians, historians and data experts has started a crowdsourcing effort called Save Our Signs. Since this summer, it has gathered more than 10,000 pictures of national park displays and exhibits submitted by visitors.
The idea is to create a public record, said Molly Blake, social sciences librarian at the University of Minnesota, and one of the five organizers of the initiative. The group is still collecting images, which can be submitted to their website.
“We really don’t know what signs are at risk, so we want to document every one.” She says national parks tell stories that may not be told anywhere else. “They’ve been carefully curated to tell a complex and nuanced view of American history.”
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But perhaps not for long. Mia Henry, an educator and leadership trainer who grew up in Alabama and led civil rights trips for 10 years, fears for the future of the historic parks. Go “while you still can,” she urges.
“Get out there, meet local people, talk to the interpreters, visit the museums, read all of the placards, and take a lot of pictures.”
To get started, consider an itinerary that touches on key moments of the movement. Start at Alabama’s Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument with a visit to the restored Gaston Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. and his lieutenants planned the city’s protest marches from Room 30. Then walk down the block to Kelly Ingram Park and shudder at the statues of police dogs attacking the Black children who marched against segregation.
Head to Selma and then follow the marchers’ trail to Montgomery. In March, its former Greyhound station, home to the Freedom Rides Museum, was briefly included on a list of surplus government property to be sold off. Try to imagine what the biracial group of students felt as their bus was swarmed by a Klan mob armed with lead pipes.
And finally, drive to Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. There, you can see his boyhood home and sit in Ebenezer Baptist Church, where a park ranger will tell you about the crowd that gathered for King’s funeral after his assassination in Memphis.
Henry has watched her tour groups wrestle with the stories told at civil rights sites. And she has seen how they move and change people.
“As you travel, don’t dismiss or romanticize the history,” she says. “Simply let it be a teacher. And do so sooner than later.”
