National Park visitors could see changes as early as Wednesday as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to “Restore Truth and Sanity to American History.” Those changes could include removing books, exhibits and markers about slavery.
But in Charleston, the history of slavery is difficult to ignore.
Fort Sumter is where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in a state the was the first to leave the Union. South Carolina cited slavery as a reason in its 1860 articles of secession.
Yet books about slavery have been flagged and could be banned from National Parks like Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie in Charleston, the Charles Pinckney National Historical Site in Mount Pleasant, and the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in Beaufort.
“I can’t imagine anything offensive in this book,” says Marjory Wentworth whose children's picture book called “Shackles” has been flagged, according to a nonprofit that protects parks, the National Parks Conservation Association.
Wentworth says the book is a true story about her boys digging for buried treasure at their Sullivan’s Island home many years ago.
“And they dug up these shackles,” says Wentworth. “And they were, you know, covered in mud, very heavy.”
“I knew exactly what they were.”
Wentworth knew they were shackles for Africans once quarantined on Sullivan’s Island before being sold in Charleston. While the discovery was difficult, Wentworth says it was educational, and she wanted to share the lesson with older children.
Retired National Park Service official Michael Allen stands along the shores of Sullivan’s Island, looking out at Fort Sumter where he worked more than 40 years ago.
At the time, his history on this barrier island as an African American, wasn’t told.
Allen spent decades changing that. He shared not just the tragedies of slavery but the triumphs of people whose forced labor helped build this nation.
“When a person comes here, they’re coming looking for answers, understanding and awareness,” says Allen. “And they might be able to see themselves while they’re here.”
Now he doesn’t know if books, markers and displays he’s collected for national parks in the Lowcountry will withstand the president’s order to remove anything that casts a negative light on America.
“That’s a step toward cleansing, erasure,” says Allen.
National Parks Conservation Association historian Alan Spears is also concerned.
“Great countries don’t hide from their history,” says Spears. “They learn from it and when necessary, they confront it.”
Spears says it’s hard to know what’s being removed because there’s been no transparency about how and why items have been flagged.
“They are sort of winging a conservative agenda to get rid of anything that might make people feel uncomfortable, or worse still, make them think,” says Spears.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees national parks, says items not consistent with the president’s order will be removed or edited. It does not address the process on how that will be done.
The agency posted park signs this summer, asking people to report negative information about Americans past and present. Most of the comments, provide by the National Parks Conservation Association, are positive. They praise parks and ask that changes to history not be made. But some call park signs woke and narratives divisive.
Visitors waiting at Liberty Square to take a ferry to Fort Sumter seem unaware that changes are in the works. Others, like John Barrett from New Jersey, are alarmed.
“It just seems a little like they’re trying to change what the real history was,” says Barrett. “
In Charleston the slave trade was real.
Just down the street from the Fort Sumter ferry, slave ships docked. Nearly half of the nation’s enslaved Africans were unloaded there, at Gadsden's Wharf.
