After a backlash, National Park Service restores old Underground Railroad webpage that prominently features Harriet Tubman. She was one of the most noted “conductors.” —LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PHOTO VIA AP/HARVEY B. LINDSLEY
The Trump administration is using the excuse of anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) to whitewash American history.
Last Sunday, The Washington Post reported that an image of and quote from abolitionist Harriet Tubman had been removed from the U.S. National Parks Service webpage about the “Underground Railroad,” following several prominent changes to government websites under the Trump administration.
On Monday, the Park Service appeared to have restored its original webpage on the history of the Underground Railroad after it was met with backlash for deleting a prominently featured photo of Tubman, as well as segments of text describing the horrors of slavery.
Part of the restored text describes the 18th- and 19th-century Underground Railroad as “efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage.” Tubman was one of the system’s best-known “conductors.”
This is part of a pattern by the Trump administration to rewrite or delete American history, especially the painful history of U.S. slavery, segregation and racial oppression of Black Americans.
An article on the Department of Defense website that highlighted Baseball Hall of Fame hero Jackie Robinson’s military service in World War II was restored last month after it was deleted in a broader illogical DEI purge. An Army page recognizing the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a Japanese American unit that fought in World War II, was also restored after its removal led to similar outcry.
In late March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “divisive narratives.” The National Museum of African American History and Culture was accused in Trump’s order of attempting to portray “American and Western culture as harmful.”
What constitutes “divisive narratives,” has been left undefined. Therefore it can be interpreted to mean whatever the Trump administration deemed it to be.
The administration must be called on its attempt to use anti-DEI as a cover to eliminate knowledge of the painful parts of American history.
“Trump is trying to rewrite the history of the Underground Railroad,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, said on social media Monday, denouncing the changes. “The Underground Railroad is an important part of the American story. We cannot let him whitewash it as part of his larger effort to erase our history.”
We cannot allow the Trump administration to revise American history.
Revisionist history is insulting to all Americans. Those who seek to revise history are not only promoting ignorance but they are also suggesting that Americans are too fragile to learn the truth about their nation or so childlike that they must be told fairy tales.
They are wrong.
Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune
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