National Park Service Restores Some Edited Webpages about Harriet Tubman
Small victories matter. Keep speaking out.
A day doesn’t go by that I am not asked what can be done to resist the Trump administration’s continued efforts to control how history is taught, exhibited, and interpreted at historic sites across the country. My response is always the same. Speak out and let your voice be heard.
Yesterday evening CNN reported that the National Park Service restored some of the original webpages on the history of the Underground Railroad after facing a public backlash for deleting a prominently featured photo of abolitionist and women’s suffragist Harriet Tubman, as well as narrative excerpts describing the horrors of slavery.
Nothing, however, has been reported regarding the other NPS websites that have also been modified in recent weeks and in ways that minimize or attempt to hide the history and legacy of slavery and race in America.
Trump Administration Continues to Undermine the National Park Service
Back in February, I reported that the website for Stonewall National Monument in New York City had been edited to comply with the Trump administration’s DEI protocols. At the time I was under the impression that the changes were carried out by employees outside of the NPS and Department of Interior. I also warned that we would likely see a similar scrub…
The content of these websites also needs to be restored.
An NPS spokesperson stated that, “Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service’s website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership. The webpage was immediately restored to its original content.”
But another representative had this to say before the pages were restored:
[T]he idea that a couple web edits somehow invalidate the National Park Service’s commitment to telling complex and challenging historical narratives is completely false and belies the extensive websites, social media posts, and programs we offer about Harriet Tubman specifically and Black History as a whole. The National Park Service recognizes Harriet Tubman as the Underground Railroad’s best known conductor and we celebrate her as a deeply spiritual woman who lived her ideals and dedicated her life to freedom.
The NPS needs to get its story straight and focus on what really matters here.
The issue isn't simply the extent or degree of the changes that have been made to these websites. The issue is WHY sweeping and drastic changes to historical content on websites across federal government agencies have been made at all and HOW it is being carried out.
This is about defending the integrity of the NPS and its ability to fulfill its mission for the American people.
I have no problem with editing and revising historical content on NPS websites. This is part of the normal process of maintaining a website and ensuring that visitors have access to historical content that has been created and vetted by employees, who are properly trained in content management. The NPS has these people on staff. Allow them to do their jobs.
As I’ve said many times before, the Trump administration has no interest in presenting the American people with an honest or sophisticated history of this nation. Its goal is to institute a narrative, through some of our most trusted institutions, that serves its own narrow political purposes.
What we are witnessing threatens everything that I believe in and have fought to advance in my twenty years of teaching and writing American history as well as through my work as a public-facing historian.
I am tired of writing these stories. It’s draining and incredibly demoralizing, but at the same time I am heartened by the response from so many people and the clear message that we are sending that history is worth defending.
If we don’t continue to apply pressure, no one will. Small victories matter and they will continue to make a difference over time.
Finally, I love the way historian Timothy Snyder explains the importance of history:
[A]ny plausible future must be connected to a remembered or historical past. Knowledge of the past is therefore a reservoir of power and self-liberation. The future might flow down many channels, but its sources are in the past. Many things are possible, but not everything is possible. When we know nothing about the past, we think anything is possible but are quickly disillusioned. When we know something about the past, we know about some things that might be possible, and we have a chance at realizing them, a chance of freedom.—On Freedom (p. 85)
History is not about a dead past, but a key to unlocking what we can envision as possible moving forward.
Kevin,
As hard as the fight is, we keep fighting. Every “minor” victory in the face of this Blitzkrieg is a major victory. We are now the Marquis. We will succeed in the end. All the best my friend. Keep up your great work and watch your six.
Steve Dundas
I get the sense that Musk and Trump are scrubbing everything they can, and backtracking when they get called out. Which makes calling every one of these things out incredibly important. Is it annoying? Exhausting? Demoralizing? Yes. But we need to have endurance. This is a marathon, not a sprint.