Following many significant modifications to federal websites under the Trump administration, an image and phrase from Harriet Tubman were deleted from a National Parks webpage concerning the “Underground Railroad.”
A comparison on the Wayback Machine between the homepage on January 21 and March 19 shows that the National Parks Service webpage for the “Underground Railroad” used to start with a quote from Tubman, the railroad’s most famous “conductor”.
The remark and an image of Tubman were later removed, along with many allusions to “enslaved” persons and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
The Washington Post originally reported on the changes. The webpage now opens with commemorative stamps of prominent civil rights luminaries and the tagline “Black/White Cooperation.” Previously, the article began with a description of enslaved peoples’ efforts to free themselves and the formation of the Underground Railroad following the Fugitive Slave Act.
However, the article now begins with two paragraphs that emphasize the “American ideals of liberty and freedom” without specifically mentioning slavery.
Tubman’s removal from the “Underground Railroad” page “is both offensive and absurd,” Fergus Bordewich, a historian and author of a book about the Underground Railroad, told CNN on Sunday. He viewed the new website as having “diminished value by its brevity.”
“To oversimplify history is to distort it,” Bordewich continued. “Americans are not children; they can understand complex and difficult historical narratives. They do not need to be shielded from the reality.
In an email to CNN, Janell Hobson, a women’s studies professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York, referred to Tubman as “one of our greatest American heroes and definitely the greatest liberator in this nation.”
“I hope that National Parks Service realize they owe it to her and other heroes like her to stand in the truth of what this history has been,” according to her words.
There is a separate National Park Service webpage dedicated to Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery in Maryland and fled to Philadelphia.
SShe returned to Maryland more than a dozen times to assist in the emancipation of other slaves, directing them through the “Underground Railroad,” a hidden network of routes and safe houses. The park service’s webpage on Tubman does not appear to have been updated since January 28, 2025.
Other controversial changes to government websites have occurred in recent months as the Trump administration carries out a campaign to eliminate DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion. Protests erupted in February after the words “transgender” and “queer” were removed from a National Parks Service website about New York City’s Stonewall Monument.
In March, the Pentagon appeared to remove a page about Jackie Robinson, the trailblazing baseball player who became the first Black Major League Baseball athlete in modern history, before restoring it.
Articles on topics unrelated to DEI, such as the Holocaust, cancer awareness, and sexual assault, have also been removed from Pentagon websites. When identifying articles and photos to remove, Pentagon officials were instructed to use keywords such as “racism,” “ethnicity,” “LGBTQ,” “history,” and “first,” according to multiple defense officials.
In his second term, President Donald Trump has taken numerous steps to seize control of American cultural and historical institutions, including dismantling the board of trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and targeting the Smithsonian Institution in an executive order issued in late March.
In his order, Trump specifically mentioned the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum as having exhibits and promoting language that he found inappropriate.
