National conversations are emerging over efforts to remove the famed 1863 photograph “The Scourged Back” from public display after a March 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The order directed federal properties such as national parks and the Smithsonian to remove any historical content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.”
The photograph, taken by William D. McPherson and J. Oliver in 1863, shows a formerly enslaved man known as “Peter,” but identified as “Gordon,” who escaped from slavery in Louisiana to join the Union Army. His back is turned to the camera, scarred with thick keloids from repeated whippings.
The image reveals the brutal realities of slavery. Distributed by abolitionists during the Civil War, it has made its way into numerous museums, such as the Smithsonian.
For some Howard University faculty, students and archivists, the attempt to remove the image has raised urgent questions about how the wounds of slavery are remembered and who shapes America’s national story.
“It’s our memories that make us,” said Lanisa Kitchiner, an art history professor at Howard. “Some of us see it and immediately relate to it because those scars, those welts, those keloids are not just markers of a bygone era… they also serve as figurative, metaphorical markers of atrocities that continue even through to the present moment.”
Kitchiner expressed deep concern for historical censorship due to acts to remove specific facets of history from public display. She worries that removing it is an attempt to misrepresent American history.
“We are in a moment where we are wrestling over the national story. We are at war in many ways over who gets to tell that story, where the sources of credibility are or how those stories that are told originate,” Kitchiner said.
Junious Levi Whitaker IV, a Ph.D. student in African studies at Howard, echoed those concerns, calling efforts to erase the image part of a larger pattern.
“Our stories are actively trying to be changed and set up to appease a certain agenda or appease a certain demographic of people,” Whitaker said. “I think it dims down to what we’ve been seeing with Black history forever. There’s always a combined effort to reteach the story.”
Rebecca Shipman, an archivist at Howard’s Moorland–Spingarn Research Center, said her first reaction to the photograph was outrage and disgust.
“The fact that you can’t see his whole face was very odd. It was like [the welts] were his identity. I couldn’t imagine anyone going through that,” she said.“I think it’s evidence. This is why I do what I do, because without evidence, people are going to come along and say it’s not true and ‘You all didn’t survive that…’’’
For others, the photograph’s power lies in its visual impact. Allison Marques, an archives librarian and public historian trainee at Howard’s Black Press Archives, said museums have long relied on visuals to engage audiences.
Drawing on her museum experience, Marques explained the importance of visual depictions, especially through exhibit labels.
“You have one sentence to hook someone,” Marques said. Most people don’t [read every text there is], but the visual is what draws people in. You can’t miss that in the same way you can miss an exhibit label.”
Marques warned that removing these visual depictions would hinder educators and curators. She also sees the Trump administration’s directive as an attempt to alter history.
“There is this sense of a ‘return to what they knew when they were children,’” Marques said. “Straightforward narratives: these are the good guys and these are the bad guys. There’s no complication in those stories.”
David Williams, an honors history major with a concentration in pre-law, said he sees the image as a reminder that slavery is not as far removed as people might assume.
“Seeing that photo, one, the fact that it’s a photograph, the fact that it’s modern technology, they’re going to make us think that slavery was way in the past,” he said.
When speaking of collective memory, Williams acknowledges the photo’s resilience, considering Peter’s efforts to escape and join the Union Army, even considering the scars on his back.
Howard scholars frame the issue in terms of collective memory. Kitchiner said the central question is how to balance stories of survival with the stories of suffering.
“Do we lead with the stories of our scars or do we lead with the stories of our somebodiness and who we are despite the scars that we have been made to wear and endure?” Kitchiner asked.
The process of removing historical materials from public institutions is not simple. Marques noted that exhibits can be permanent or temporary and that institutions like the Smithsonian are “semi-independent,” making the removal more complex than a single directive.
For many, the deeper question is whether erasing an image can erase the story it tells. Kitchiner said history endures beyond what hangs on museum walls.
“Erasure only works when we accept it,” Kitchiner said. “You can take down the image of ‘The Scourged Back,’ but you cannot take away the stories of those who know that image. Your story is your story… The duty is upon you to tell it again and again and through the act of repetitious telling, it cannot be erased.”
Copy Edited by D’Nyah Jefferson – Philmore
