Racial reckoning turns focus to roadside historical markers

Pennsylvania had been installing historical markers for more than a century when the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 brought a fresh round of questions from the public about just whose stories were being told on the state’s roadsides — and the language used to tell them.

The increased scrutiny helped prompt a review of all 2,500 markers by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, a process that has focused on factual errors, inadequate historical context, and racist or otherwise inappropriate references.

So far, the state has removed two markers, revised two and ordered new text for two others.

Across the country, historical markers have in some places become another front in the national reckoning over slavery, segregation and racial violence that has also brought downCivil War statues and changed or reconsidered the names of institutions, roads and geographical features.