Trump designates national monument to honor black soldiers’ role in Civil War

President Donald Trump on Friday used his executive powers for the first time to designate a national monument, establishing a 380-acre site in Kentucky to honor black Americans’ role as soldiers during the Civil War.

The move won praise from local activists and conservationists but also criticism from several environmental groups, which noted Trump had used this same authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act last year to downsize two existing national monuments in Utah.

Republicans had pushed for more than a year to establish a national monument at Camp Nelson in Nicholasville, Ky., which served as one of the largest recruitment and training depots for United States Colored Troops. While Kentucky was the last state in the Union to allow the enlistment of black men, the camp sent 23,000 of the roughly 180,000 black troops who fought on the Union’s side.

“During the war, thousands of enslaved African Americans risked their lives escaping to Camp Nelson, out of a deep desire for freedom and the right of self-determination,” Trump declared in the proclamation he signed Friday.

Jim Fryer, a retired Navy senior chief petty officer and descendant of men who fought in the U.S. Colored Troops, said in a statement Saturday, “These are hallowed grounds here, let it be a park, let it remain a park.”

Kate Kelly, public lands for the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said that the camp “deserves to be protected.” However, she questioned the timing of the proclamation.

“But we can’t ignore the deep irony and injustice in President Trump using the same authority to protect one chapter of America’s story, while illegally stripping protections for another national monument that honors Native American history and culture,” she said, referring to Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, which Trump shrank by 85 percent in December. “Given this announcement comes mere days before a tight election in Kentucky, we must also question whether the historic site is being used as a political pawn.”