“Whipped Peter”- An Inconvenient Record

The current regime continues to attempt to rewrite history.

It’s harder to burnish America as a once-again great land when the full history of slavery is on display.

One of the items being removed from national parks and museums is the infamous “Whipped Peter” photo.

Peter, also known as Gordon, was a slave in Louisiana who escaped and joined a Union Army encampment.

This picture was taken while Peter was being examined by a doctor, revealing the keloid scarring on his back from being whipped by his overseer and then having salt poured into his wounds.

The photo was used by abolitionist to combat the Southern narrative that slavery was a loving and benign practice.

This picture puts the lie to the lie, which is why it’s being removed by this administration.

As history books are being written with imaginary illustrations of slaveowners shaking hands with slaves, and phony narratives that talk about the happiness and contentment of slaves, this photo stands as a stark reminder of how a society will lie to shape a convenient narrative.

Slavery has always been inconvenient for America.

It is inconvenient for a nation that proudly proclaimed “all men are created equal” to know that on those same shores, human beings owned other human beings.

Even the blind can see the incongruity.

More than ever before, the United States wants to hide, obfuscate, and outright lie about its history of chattel slavery.

Saying that you want to “Make America Great Again” begs the question: At what point in history was America great?

Unfortunately, many of the president’s followers believe that America was greater when Black people had little to no rights.

The current Supreme Court is one that would make former Justice Roger Taney beam with pride.

Taney was the Chief Justice of the Court when it handed down the Dred Scott decision that clarified the desire of some Whites that Black Americans were and always would be second- or third-class citizens.

He argued in his opinion that Black people had always been:

“…regarded as beings of an inferior order, altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

The current Court has decided that laws and practices allowing race to be considered as a factor are unconstitutional, except for those designating Black and Brown people as candidates for ICE arrest and subsequent deportation.

Race has a bearing on every aspect of American history.

It’s at the core of our jurisprudence.

It’s at the center of American law enforcement, banking, housing, and sociopolitical practices.

It’s behind everything America does and doesn’t do, and everything America is, wants, and wants to appear to be.

America has always been guilty of the grossest hypocrisy.

America proclaimed, “all men are created equal,” but didn’t say that “all men” meant “White men.”

America said it was a place for “liberty and justice for all,” but forgot to add fine print that said that Black people were an exception.

America’s most famous monument is inscribed with words from Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus:”

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”

But America forgot to add the parenthetical statement: (But only if they are White and Christian).

America has always taken pride in being a free country but never considered that a fascist despot would take the land’s many evils and coalesce them into a prejudiced mob riddled with racist and nativist myopia.

The story of “Whipped Peter” is a story that will not disappear.

It will not be forgotten, especially by those of us who are his racial, if not lineal descendants.

Peter escaped from slavery and joined the Union Army in the hopes that one day, he and people like him would know freedom.

Freedom to live beyond whippings and bondage.

Freedom to live, love, vote, and work as they choose.

Freedom to live without fear of losing freedom.