Media
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Christopher Rufo bluntly revealed his strategy of weaponizing “critical race theory,” but he stopped short of admitting to what we believe is his ultimate goal: A complete rewrite of history.
We already covered the Republican attempt to drastically revise the atrocities of January 6th, but their plan goes way deeper than that… and their targets mainly involve the revision of history and impact of “woke” issues like sexism, Indigenous persecution, gay rights and climate change.
…but nothing comes close to their obsession with whitewashing the lives of black people.
The Trump/Vance administration and other conservatives are not only working to keep the facts of things like slavery out of our schools, but they are also trying to keep them out of our national park sites and museums. They claim they are doing this because, as Donald Trump put it, these places focus too much on “how bad slavery was”:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
To that end, President Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History aimed at cleansing federal parks and museums of displays that cast U.S. history “in a negative light.” Two months later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed that up with his own order to remove information at the 433 U.S. National Park Service installations “that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
So far, the removals at the national parks include signs that refer to slavery, the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, and conflicts with Native Americans.
Among the things removed was a photograph housed at the Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia that is widely considered to be one of the most iconic images in American history. The photo known as “The Scourged Back” was from a series of images shot in 1863 of a former slave who escaped John and Bridget Lyons’ Louisiana plantation and found safety at a Union encampment in Baton Rouge.
In the photo, the man known as Peter (sometimes Gordon) was photographed shirtless by two traveling photographers during a medical exam, exposing to the camera a crisscross of jagged welts and scars that weaved from his buttocks to his shoulders – seared there by the whip that tore through his naked back by the plantation’s overseer, Artayou Carrier (Peter recounted that his last beating was so revolting that John Lyons actually fired Carrier).
The white soldiers at the camp were appalled by the state of Peter’s back but the black men barely flinched: “It sent a thrill of horror to every white person present, but the few blacks who were waiting paid but little attention to the sad spectacle, such terrible scenes being painfully familiar to them all.”
Peter’s photo spread like wildfire though the nation via newspapers and cartes-de-visite (small-sized photos mounted on a thick card that were then traded among friends and families). Even for those who had personally witnessed the brutality of slavery, this singular image was shocking. For those who hadn’t fully understood the horrors, it was a game-changer.
J.W. Mercer, a Union Army surgeon in Louisiana, wrote this on the back of a carte-de-visite he sent to L.B. Marsh, a colonel in the Union Army: “I have found a large number of the four hundred or so contrabands [people who had escaped slavery and were now protected by the Union Army] examined by me to be as badly lacerated as the specimen represented in the enclosed photograph.”
When Peter reached the Union encampment with two of his fellow slaves – three had left with him but one was murdered by the slave hunters that were pursuing them with bloodhounds – they immediately enlisted. It was reported that in July 1863, Sergeant Peter courageously fought in an attack on Port Hudson – as a Union soldier in General Benjamin F. Butler’s Louisiana Native Guards, a regiment made up exclusively of free black men.
The very idea that people are trying to erase the basic truths of the American story is terrifying. Of course we want to celebrate, in the words of Donald Trump, the “Success” and “Brightness” of America, but we can’t truly appreciate those parts if we don’t fully understand the hard parts. Bad things happened. Pain was inflicted. Mistakes were made. Acknowledging this doesn’t diminish the American story; it deepens it. Remembering the bad things doesn’t hold us hostage to them; it liberates us from them.
The scars on Peter’s back are only part of his story. His legacy is not one of a victim. It’s one of a hero. A hero who had the remarkable resilience to move beyond unimaginable pain and suffering and fight valiantly to ensure that his experience never happened to anyone again. Peter is the American story.
So, where do we go from here?
Before anything else, we must get religious and political agendas out of our public schools. Like, yesterday.
Teachers are incredibly influential in kid’s lives. As such, just as they should not know what faith their public-school teacher subscribes to, they should also not know what political party their teacher is associated with or, God forbid, who they voted for. A public-school teacher has no more business hanging a Black Lives Matter banner in his/her classroom than wearing a MAGA hat while at school.
Does that mean that Black Lives Matter and MAGA should never be discussed in public schools, or used as student-chosen topics for research papers or projects? Of course not!
Kids aren’t stupid. They live in the real world just like the rest of us and should be given the space to express themselves on their journey to becoming well-rounded, knowledgeable, and discerning citizens. After all, isn’t that what school is for?
It most certainly is, but you wouldn’t know it based on what’s happening in Tennessee, where teachers are prohibited from teaching anything that may cause students to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex” or anything that can lead to “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people.”
First of all, this is hysterically hypocritical of conservatives. Aren’t they the very ones who say “liberal” schools are churning out a bunch of “snowflakes?”
But beyond that, what does the language in the Tennessee bill even mean? Come on! It’s highly possible that the Holocaust may evoke unique feelings of “anguish” for Jewish students, but does that mean it shouldn’t be taught in public schools? Should slavery not be taught simply because white students may “feel discomfort” by the fact that some white people once did really horrible things to black people?
The Holocaust and slavery are not revisionist history. They both happened. Period. And there is absolutely no way that slavery – and the extremely difficult decades that followed for black Americans – have no effect on some of our current day challenges. Republicans can pass all the legislation they want, but they cannot change this fact.
Also, Republicans, you should remember, as W.E.B. DuBois’ put it, that changing “history into propaganda” cuts both ways. Just as you don’t want narratives like the 1619 Project taught in schools, other people don’t want the Trump administration’s 1776 Report – which committed to the “restoration of American education,” whatever that means – taught in schools.
As Republicans fight to keep certain racial themes out of schools, we're just as concerned about the racial propaganda that is already in schools – falsehoods like the Lost Cause ridiculousness, a narrative that tries to rewrite history and say that the Civil War had nothing to do with the enslavement of black people at all; rather it was about the moral and just goals of gaining economic prosperity, “state’s rights,” and preserving the “Southern way of life.” It’s almost impossible to fathom, but the Lost Cause is still included in some textbooks in the South.
< Sidebar: To those who try to defend the Lost Cause nonsense on ANY level, you can just save it. There is zero question that the reason the South fought the Civil War was to preserve slave labor. One must look no further than Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephen’s Cornerstone Speech, given in 1861, for confirmation of this: “Our new government is founded upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” >
Is the truth about why the Civil War was fought disturbing? Of course it is! It’s appalling. But it is, in fact, the truth! Just because we acknowledge that some white people did something bad in the past in no way suggests that every white person alive today is racist or that every white person alive today should feel guilty about transgressions perpetrated by their ancestors. And guess what? No one is trying to “take away” Christmas either. Calm down, white people.
We're also concerned that certain proven historical events are, for whatever reason, still being left out of public schools. We're not talking about sweeping, possibly controversial racial narratives; we're talking about proven historical events.
The fact that this remains a problem became clear to many of us in May of 2021 when we watched the coverage of the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. Imagine our surprise to learn there even was a Tulsa Massacre, or something known as “Black Wall Street,” since we had never heard one thing about either of them.
Regardless of where we each come down on critical race theory, or DEI, or whatever else, surely we can all agree that we can’t just jump from the dock at Point Comfort where enslaved Africans first got off boats right to the Civil Rights Act, skipping over the sometimes painful but documented historical facts in between.
As the critical race theory debate went from simmering hot to fully enflamed in 2021, Emily often thought back to the day she went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. (a part of the Smithsonian Institution) with seven white, black, and Hispanic 17 and 18-year-old girls.
This museum is stunning in every way. It’s aesthetically beautiful, but that pales in comparison to the power of its message. The exhibits are no frills and just present the facts in a very straightforward, non-manipulative way. Early on, Emily noticed that, although her group had stayed together in the other D.C. museums they had visited on the trip, each of them had broken off from the others and were absorbing this museum independent of one another.
After, they shared their thoughts about the experience. Emily says that the highly intelligent and elegant way these girls analyzed and expressed what they had learned about the past and how they feel it relates to the present and future was incredible. Regardless of the color of their skin, each of their analysis and insight was as impressive as it was inspiring.
Our kids don’t need us to explain the complicated and at times hypocritical nature of our Founding Fathers and other historical figures like President Abraham Lincoln; they can read the actual words of these men and evaluate their legacies for themselves.
Our kids don’t need our running commentary on how the horrors of slavery relate, or don’t relate, to the racial inequities that exist today; they can absorb the stories and interpret modern-day statistics with their own brains. Our kids don’t need us to supply them with, as Justice Thurgood Marshall once put it, a “sensitive understanding of the Constitution’s inherent defects and its promising evolution.” They can read and study the Constitution and decide for themselves how they feel about those things.
But to properly assess them, our kids must have access to ALL the FACTS. History teaches by example, provides a compass for the future, and, more important than anything, helps us not repeat the mistakes of the past.
If we focus on presenting our kids proven historical facts in an untainted, straightforward, and honest way, they will have all the tools they need to deconstruct, interpret, and critique the information they are given – and be fully capable of connecting the dots all on their own.