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The National Park Service has removed a quote and an image of US abolitionist Harriet Tubman from a webpage about the Underground Railroad network that helped enslaved people escape captivity – and instead, the page now emphasizes what it describes as “Black/White Cooperation” as Donald Trump’s presidential administration continues its effort to sanitize the country’s history.
Previously, the page in question led with a quote from Tubman, who was the most renowned Underground Railroad operative, along with a prominent image of her. However, the revised page no longer includes these elements, and several references to enslaved people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which Tubman as well as the Underground Railroad defied have also been removed.
The revised webpage now starts with images of stamps depicting five Black and white abolitionists, including Tubman, with text overlaying the images that reads: “Black/White Cooperation.”
In the previous version of the page, the first sentences described the Underground Railroad as “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War”, adding that it “refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage”.
But now, the first paragraph no longer mentions slavery – which the US abolished in 1865 – and instead describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement”.
And the second paragraph states that the railroad “bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality” and “joined the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the extraordinary actions of ordinary men and women working in common purpose to free a people”.
These changes were first reported by the Washington Post on Sunday.
Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has actively worked to roll back initiatives and efforts it sees as related to DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – across the federal government.
In February, the Pentagon sent out a memo ordering a “digital content refresh” across all defense department public platforms. It involved removing any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion” from the department’s website postings, photos, news articles and videos.
According to CNN, Pentagon officials were instructed to search for keywords like “racism”, “ethnicity”, “LGBTQ”, “history”, and “first” when looking for articles and photos to remove from government-owned sites.
And in recent weeks, according to the Associated Press, thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups have been removed in an effort to delete material the administration sees as promoting DEI.
Two National Park Service employees also told the Washington Post that at the interior department, which oversees the park service, political appointees directed senior career officials there to identify webpages that may need to be changed.
In February, the National Park Service removed references to transgender people from its Stonewall national monument webpage.
In mid-March, the defense department made headlines after it removed a webpage honoring an army general who served in the Vietnam war and received the country’s highest military decoration – and the letters “DEI” were added to the site’s address.
The removal sparked backlash, and the page was restored.
A spokesperson for the defense department said that the page was taken down mistakenly but defended efforts the administrations efforts to remove content promoting DEI.
“I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this – that anybody that says in the department of defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect,” the spokesperson said.
The Washington Post reported several additional recent changes it has spotted to government-owned webpages, including that a webpage which examined Benjamin Franklin’s relationship with slavery was taken offline and now displays the message: “This page is currently being worked on. Please check back later.”
Additionally, a section on the Minute Man National Historical Park webpage about the unrecognized contributions of Black soldiers in the revolutionary war was deleted, the Post reported.
Asked about the website changes, a park service spokesperson did not address any specific edits but told the Washington Post that the agency has “been entrusted with preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, safeguarding special places and sharing stories of American experiences”.
“We take this role seriously and can point to many examples of how we tell nuanced and difficult stories about American history,” it added.
In late March, Trump signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, asserting his administration’s intention to eliminate what they consider to be “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the prominent cultural and educational establishment, which holds the world’s largest set of museums and research entities.
The directive ignited backlash, with critics accusing the administration of attempting to erase diversity from US history.
