Yesterday I posted about the newly disclosed set of documents assembled by the Interior Department of National Park signage that may be taken down under President Trump’s year-old Executive Order calling for “sanity” in interpreting American history. Over the next week I will present some of the documents about what signage is now considered questionable. Last month signage at the President’s House in Philadelphia was removed and the panels taken down appeared on this list.
Today, we will look at signage at Gulf Islands National Seashore. I don’t know anyone in my neighborhood in New York who has even heard of the park. It has not been a spot of tense racial conflict. Yet even here historical panels may be removed.
The photos in this article were taken from the “removal” files of the Department of the Interior that were created in 2025.
The seashore gets most of its visitors for its beaches and fishing. It is a multistate operation beginning in the Panhandle of Florida and stretching across Alabama and Mississippi. The Seashore was only incorporated into the National Park Service in 1971 when it was seen as a recreational area. Over the last half century there have been signs put up making historical sites which include Civil War fortifications. Because several United States Colored Troop regiments were stationed along the future Seashore, recently signs tying the Black troops to the forts have been placed. So below is a signage in which white officers and Black enlisted men are displayed along with a quote from a white officer thanking God for the opportunity to command a regiment of African men.
While the panels describe the military uses of the structures, they also tell the visitors that much of the labor was supplied by slaves.
Two of the major Civil War sites are Fort Barrancas on the Naval Air Station in Pensacola and Fort Pickens on East Pensacola Beach. Fort Barrancas is an impressive fortification with a professionally designed visitor center, even though the interiors of the fort are only open about twelve days each years, However there are two trails with wayside signage like those on this page.
The panel below is devoted to the military’s dependance on slaves to build the fort.
The signs also tell the stories of African Americans who sought freedom at the site during the Civil War.
Their is also a descriptive panel on the contribution of Africans to the blockading United States Navy.
Another panel tells the story of a slave who came into the Union lines after being tortured by his master.
Before the 1980s, Civil War sites virtually ignored the Black Civil War experience. Recently there have been dozens of markers placed in National Parks to tell the stories of the 200.000 Black men who joined the Union forces as well as the lives of their wives and children.
