The rewriting of history that is going on in this country is outrageous. 

 

We cover the Republican attempt to drastically revise the atrocities of January 6th here, but it goes way deeper than that.

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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”:

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“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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.​