The Trump/MAGA/White Supremacist administration is ordering the removal from displays information and depictions of the era of slavery in the United States. One of the most emblematic images of enslavement is the graphic and soul shocking image called “The Scourged Back” that depicts the back of Peter Gordon photographed circa 1863 in Louisiana. It shows graphically his healed but black keloid bareback. The photograph of his scarred back yells loudly the horrors and brutality of enslavement. The wounds on Peter Gordon’s back were inflicted on him by his so-called owner.
To remove the histories and experiences of Black people in the US is part of the educational pogrom enacted to “whitewash” America’s real history. To “whitewash” history is the political project to change the narrative of America and make that narrative into the blessings and triumphs of white people, while ignoring the blemishes, scars, and overcoming that is as great a part of America’s history as any other.
The beginning and institution of slavery in North America’s British colonies commences in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. It doesn’t legally end until 1865. A Civil War had to be fought to settle the question and end the legal institution of slavery. And even when slavery had legally ended new systems and schemes were developed, particularly in the southern US, to re-institute slavery de-facto. This system called Jim Crow would continue through to its painstakingly dismantlement by courageous individuals and movements that exposed it and bought about its demise. This means that formal enslavement lasts for 246 years. Then the era of Jim Crow lasts for at least another 100 years, and its effects still persists for many today. In 2026 the United States of America will celebrate its 250th birthday. In those 250 years of existence, in comparison, there is 247 years of enslavement. Then, there is de-facto enslavement, called Jim Crow or American Apartheid, that lasts for at least another 100 years. So, there is no way that America was born, existed nor its story told without the story of Black people, and for most of us our saga from enslavement to liberation, and from hardships to overcoming. To remove the histories and narratives of Black people in North Americas is like removing the heart from a living body and along with its heart it also loses its soul. The body and its story without Black history is really a dead and empty narrative and will remain so until America has the courage to tell the whole story.
The American narrative is the statue of Liberty greeting scores of people arriving at Ellis Island. The words on a bronze plaque invites: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”. And in the statute’s left hand in the form of a tablet is the date July 4, 1776.
There is a limitation in knowing the full history of most Black people. This is because we were treated as property and given names for inventory – bought, sold, raped, and worked to death. Doing genealogies there is usually a brick wall that Black families encounter. What we do know exists through oral traditions that attempt to teach and convey to us experiences and history in a world where we live and work but never existed.
The other story for me is before Ellis Island. My family arrived on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. This was a major marketplace and auction block for the precious and enriching cargo of Black people. When talking to my family, it seems from the narrative, that they and their descendants were on the same plantation in South Carolina for at least 200 years – 46 years, more or less, shy of the existence of this history country.
There have been ludicrous reasons presented for removing images and memories of slavery. One is that it makes white people feel guilty. The Trump/MAGA/white supremacist administration says that it is “corrosive ideology” which means that a new ideology is being fomented. Evidently the current ideological narrative that includes slavery and overcoming that ordeal somehow eats away and corrodes the so-called American narrative. But in reality, who is being bothered and feels corroded are the people who want to sanitize and de-color the real history of America. It is not that they are embarrassed by the brutal history of enslavement but for them they embrace a politically racialized framework proffering that the history, experiences, and existence of Black people don’t really exist. This administration has proven how racialized it is. Their efforts through DOGE cost 350,000 Black women their jobs. Mobs called law enforcement, some in masks and with no identification, roam the streets removing Brown and Black immigrants. They have succeeded in some circles of criminalizing immigrants so that they could carry out their agenda of removing non-whites from the population. And not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.A scripture says that “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk to them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.”
Our story will be told despite this racist agenda of erasure. We will talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. We will tell the story into generations, and we will become loud about who we are, what we have experienced, how we have overcome the impossible with possibilities, and declared, no matter how hard we have been pressed down and ignored, in the spirit of Maya Angelou, “Still I rise!” And so will the history of our experiences rise to the heavens and invade all of American history, and we will not be erased.
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Rev Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Advisor-Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA, & Director and Chief Visionary-Faith Strategies, LLC
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