The National Parks Service has removed references to civil rights icon Harriet Tubman from its webpage about the “Underground Railroad.”
According to the Washington Post, the NPS “Underground Railroad” site previously led with an image and quote from Tubman, the main “conductor” of the network of routes and safe havens that helped enslaved people escape to freedom. Tubman’s image and quote were no longer on the website as of March 19 along with other references to “enslaved” people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
The current version of the webpage leads with commemorative stamps of various civil rights leaders with text that reads “Black/White Cooperation.” An article included on the webpage previously began with a description of enslaved people’s efforts to free themselves and the formation of the Underground Railroad after the Fugitive Slave Act. Now, the article starts with paragraphs that emphasize “American ideals of liberty and freedom” and doesn’t specifically mention slavery.
The NPS “Underground Railroad” webpage isn’t the first to face changes amid the Trump administration’s attack on DEI. In March, the Pentagon removed a webpage about trailblazing baseball player and veteran Jackie Robinson before restoring it amid public outrage. Other references to the Holocaust, cancer awareness, sexual assault, and more were permanently deleted from Pentagon webpages. Pentagon officials were reportedly instructed to search for keywords, including “racism,” “ethnicity,” “LGBTQ,” “history” and “first” when identifying articles to remove.
A separate NPS webpage on Tubman still exists, but her removal from the “Underground Railroad” site “is both offensive and absurd,” Fergus Bordewich, a historian and the author of a book about the Underground Railroad, said in a statement.
“To oversimplify history is to distort it,” Bordewich said. “Americans are not infants: they can handle complex and challenging historical narratives. They do not need to be protected from the truth.”
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