MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

National parks have until tomorrow to meet the Trump administration’s deadline to remove anything that casts America in a negative light, and that could include slavery. South Carolina Public Radio’s Victoria Hansen reports from Charleston, a city where the history of slavery is difficult to ignore.

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VICTORIA HANSEN, BYLINE: Along the waterfront in Charleston, visitors waiting to catch a ferry to Fort Sumter are greeted by a video.

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HANSEN: The harbor fort is where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in a state that was the first to leave the Union. South Carolina cited slavery as a reason in its articles of secession. Yet books about slavery have been flagged and could be banned from the gift shop at this national park and others across the area.

MARJORY WENTWORTH: I can’t imagine anything offensive in this book.

HANSEN: That’s Marjory Wentworth, whose picture book for older kids called “Shackles” showed up on a list of books the National Park Service is reviewing, according to a nonprofit that supports parks – the National Parks Conservation Association. The book is a true story, Wentworth says, about her boys digging for buried treasure at their barrier island home.

WENTWORTH: And they dug up these shackles, and they were, you know, covered in mud. Very heavy. I knew exactly what they were.

HANSEN: She knew they were shackles for Africans, once quarantined on Sullivan’s Island before being sold in Charleston. She says the discovery, while difficult, was educational.

Retired National Park Service official Michael Allen stands along the island shores, looking out at Fort Sumter, where he worked more than 40 years ago.

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HANSEN: At the time, his history on this island as an African American wasn’t told. Alan spent decades changing that, sharing not just the tragedies of slavery, but the triumphs of people whose forced labor helped build this nation.

MICHAEL ALLEN: When a person comes here, they’re coming looking for answers, understanding and awareness. And they might even be able to see themselves why they’re here.

HANSEN: But now he doesn’t know if books, markers and displays he’s collected for National Parks in Charleston will withstand the president’s executive order, which calls for, quote, “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”

ALLEN: That’s a step toward cleansing, erasure.

ALAN SPEARS: Great countries don’t hide from their history. They learn from it, and when necessary, they confront it.

HANSEN: That’s Alan Spears, an historian with the National Parks Conservation Association. He says it’s hard to know what’s being removed because there’s been no transparency about how and why items have been flagged.

SPEARS: They are sort of winging a conservative agenda to get rid of anything that might make people feel uncomfortable or, worse still, that might make people think.

HANSEN: In a statement, the U.S. Department of the Interior in charge of national parks says items not consistent with the president’s order will be removed or edited. It does not address the process on how it will be done. The agency posted park signs this summer, asking people to report negative information about Americans past and present. Tourists visiting Fort Sumter seem unaware there will be changes or alarmed, like John Barrett (ph) from New Jersey.

JOHN BARRETT: Just seems a little like they’re trying to change what the real history was.

HANSEN: In Charleston, the slave trade was real. Just down the street from the ferry, slave ships docked, unloading nearly half of the nation’s enslaved Africans.

For NPR News, I’m Victoria Hansen in Charleston.

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