Timucuan Preserve is next to Jacksonville in Florida. In is a giant wetland along the St. John’s River and the Atlantic Ocean. Contained within it is the Kingsley Plantation. The brochure and exhibits of the Kingsley Planation have been flagged as a violation of President Trump’s Executive Order from 2025 ordering the restoring of “sanity” in the telling of American History. The photographs were supplied by Interior Department staff and are not always very good. All of the material that is being questioned has to do with Black people living and working on the site.
The first piece that is undergoing review is the Audio Tour of the plantation. It says that visitors will be taken into the lives of “free and enslaved people” of the plantation and the map at the bottom of the brochure shows a path to the slave quarters. You would think that the caretakers of an antebellum plantation in Florida would know their were slaves working the grounds.
In the parlor of the mansion are exhibits on the enslaved population at the plantation. This exhibit shows the process of transporting Africans across the sea.
Another exhibit under review shows an infant being separated from his or her mother.
In the barn there is a display of the owner ordering around his slaves.
Also in the barn is a drawing of an escaped slave displaying the scars on his back from being tortured.
On the trail to the slave cabins there are several panels that explain the lives of the people enslaved there.
These panels may have been flagged because they show the “great cruelty” in the plantation system in Florida.
Another panel under review talks about the “Strength to Survive” among the enslaved.
This article is the third in my series looking at the Interior Department review process by examining exhibits under review. There will be more over the next four days.
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