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According to NPR, former National Park Service exhibit planner Elizabeth Kerwin, 58, spent years building a wall of remembrance naming hundreds of enslaved people connected to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, the site of John Brown’s 1859 raid aimed at sparking a slave uprising. The exhibit never opened.
It’s one of dozens removed or shelved nationwide under a Trump executive order aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
Kerwin and other former employees have since organized under the name “Resistance Rangers,” forming an education coalition called America 433+, a reference to the 433 sites in the National Park System.
According to the outlet, the group held its first teach-in at Harpers Ferry on Juneteenth, a deliberate choice meant to highlight both Black history and how quickly it was being erased from federal sites.
The timing coincided with a major legal development. Advocacy groups sued the Department of the Interior over the order, and U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ordered the agency to halt further removals and restore materials already taken down, ruling that “history cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story.”
Kelley reportedly ordered 52 removed items reinstated across more than 30 federal sites by July 4. It remains unclear whether Kerwin’s exhibit will be among them.
Kerwin’s research had identified hundreds of enslaved people who lived in the Harpers Ferry area between 1769 and 1861, many never before named in the public historical record.
“The people who were overlooked and unnamed and didn’t count in the official record, they deserve to take up space in our national memory,” Kerwin told NPR. “They are America.”
The Resistance Rangers say they aren’t waiting on the courts or the administration to act. The group has printed copies of banned pamphlets and plans to distribute them directly to park visitors, with a national protest planned this weekend tied to the 250th anniversary.
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