WASHINGTON — A few years ago, Blake Spencer explored the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington with two of his friends. The Howard University graduate wanted to check out the area and learn more about the abolitionist who, some 150 years ago, had been a towering figure on the school’s board of trustees.
Their excursion was an “incredible” thing, said Spencer, 22. The site preserves the home where Douglass spent the last 17 years of his life and sits atop a 50-foot hill east of the Anacostia River, offering views of the Washington Monument and neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Visitors can tour the grounds, watch a film on the powerful orator’s life, and soak in exhibitions that feature his speeches and writings on Black civil rights.
But as the U.S. prepares to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday that Douglass used as an opportunity to challenge racial inequality, something else might also catch a visitor’s eye. They might see a new sign prompting them to use a QR code to report information they come across that could be considered “negative about either past or living Americans.”
This signage has been posted at National Park Service sites — in compliance with directions from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. His intent is to help carry out President Donald Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many fear that this move could have a chilling effect on rangers who simply want to do their job — and also undermine the vital public education role of these sites.
A supervisory ranger at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site told Capital B that staff would not be available to comment on Burgum’s order. It calls for the review of “any public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that have been “removed or changed from January 1, 2020.
The National Park Service, which falls under the U.S. Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction, told Capital B that each piece of public feedback it receives is “manually reviewed and evaluated before being referred to the appropriate subject matter expert” to “ensure that the input we act upon is both relevant and credible.”
While Spencer, who works at Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, is angry about the administration’s treatment of the past, he isn’t surprised. Many Trump allies — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — led the push to purge AP African American Studies from public schools several years ago.
“I’d argue that the intention has always been to erase, or at least whitewash, Black history,” Spencer told Capital B. “When I see what’s happening with DEI and National Park Service sites, I can’t help but think that the administration is just revealing its hand. Things are a lot more overt now than they were before.”
This rewriting of the past makes him fear for the future.
“I’m worried about children, especially Black children, not being able to have access to their own history,” Spencer said, also underscoring the deep irony of the signage being posted ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.
On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a keynote speech at an Independence Day event, where he asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He wasn’t trying to torpedo the U.S. or erode anyone’s faith in its noble values. Rather, he was prodding the country to live up to those values — “the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me,” he said.
Burgum’s order came a couple of months after attempts to scrub Black history from federal websites prompted a public outcry. In an effort to avoid discussion of race, racism, and other subjects unpopular with the administration, agencies earlier this year quietly sought to censor information pertaining to the battle for Black equality.
“I think that this is an effort to turn back the clock to the days when white supremacy was king,” Bill Gwaltney, who held a variety of positions with the National Park Service over the course of nearly four decades, told Capital B. “I doubt that anyone is going to say that George Washington, as a president, was negative. But people might say that they don’t want to hear about the slaves who helped to build the White House.”
The National Park Service has traditionally struggled to tell a larger story of the country, explained Gwaltney, who spent much of his career enhancing the interpretation of Black history at national parks. But it has been making progress. It first established the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 2017, and the Stonewall National Monument in New York in 2016.
“People really stepped up, but now they’re being told to step off,” he added. “It’s incredibly troubling.”
Earlier this year, Trump ordered the National Park Service to remove references to transgender Americans from the Stonewall National Monument website. The agency also withdrew a Black Louisiana community from consideration for National Historic Landmark designation.
A lurking “Big Brother figure”
Josie Jangdhari traveled to D.C. from Atlanta to enjoy the district’s historical sites and the lessons they have for visitors today.
“I’m always at the King Center [in Atlanta] to reflect on what Martin Luther King Jr. and so many other civil rights leaders did to move this country forward,” Jangdhari, 51, told Capital B, standing next to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial near the National Mall. “It’s super important that we remember their commitment to racial justice and nonviolence.”
Located in West Potomac Park, the memorial includes a 30-foot statue of King that was inspired by a line from his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” The site, which is managed by the National Park Service, also has a sign encouraging visitors to report any “negative” information. To Jangdhari, it’s crucial to push back against efforts to tell a version of history that’s less than complete.
“Those issues from the 1960s, we still have a lot of them today,” she said. “We have to continue to organize and speak out.”
Alan Spears, the senior director of cultural resources in the National Parks Conservation Association’s government affairs department, shares Jangdhari’s frustration.
He takes comfort in the fact that visitors are mostly filing positive reports. Still, his chief concern is that Burgum’s order will have a chilling effect on National Park Service staff — discourage rangers from telling history that’s accurate, just, and inclusive.
“There are people who think that the country has gone too far, that it’s ‘too woke,’” Spears told Capital B. “Somebody visiting Gettysburg National Military Park or Minidoka National Historic Site might see something about slavery or racism, see that QR code, and go, ‘I’m gonna turn you guys in because you’re talking in a very negative way, in my opinion, about U.S. history, about the country I love.’”
America has a tremendous history, he added, saying that there have been times when we’ve done things right, but there have also been times when we’ve failed to live up to the better angels of our nature. The job of the National Park Service is to embrace the whole story.
“But how can it do that if we’ve got this QR code out there and this Big Brother figure looking over people’s shoulders?” Spears said. “Our last national monument victory was the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in the Mississippi Delta and on Chicago’s South Side. I don’t know how you can tell that critical civil rights moment about a 14-year-old who was lynched without making some people feel uncomfortable.”
This professional pressure could be particularly difficult for newer rangers to navigate. They’re just starting their careers, and don’t want to be dismissed or thrown out of the profession in disgrace.
“You don’t know what someone might be thinking,” Gwaltney said. “Anybody could pick anything to report. Somebody could go, ‘I think that it’s disgusting that you’re talking about slavery.’ It’s just unbelievable. It’s like having a political commissar.”
As a researcher, Spencer, the Howard graduate, is deeply hurt by the widespread attempt to revise the past and understands the importance of making sure that the public has access to U.S. history.
It’s a complicated story, he maintained, but we’ve got to tell it — all of it.
“As we move away from slavery, from Reconstruction, from Jim Crow, there seems to be more and more apathy toward Black struggles,” Spencer said. “And this problem is going to get worse if we erase history.”
