The National Park Service on Sunday removed abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s photo and quote from its webpage on the Underground Railroad, igniting criticism that the move was yet another attempt by the Trump Administration to erase history.
“To oversimplify history is to distort it,” Fergus Bordewich, a historian and author of the book "Bound for Canaan: The Story of the Underground Railroad," told CNN. “Americans are not infants: They can handle complex and challenging historical narratives. They do not need to be protected from the truth.”
The National Park Service’s webpage previously featured a quote from Tubman, a photograph of her from the Library of Congress, and an article explaining the history and impact of the Underground Railroad on the nation’s abolitionist movement, The Guardian reported.
In addition to removing it, the National Park Service eliminated several references to enslaved people, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the Underground Railroad, The Guardian reported.
The webpage now displays images of stamps featuring Tubman and civil rights leaders, including William Still, Catharine White Coffin, Thomas Garrett, and Frederick Douglass, CNN reported.
Born into slavery in 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman later escaped and fled to Philadelphia, where she ultimately achieved her goal of obtaining freedom, according to PBS.
She later became the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses used to help enslaved people escape from the South, according to PBS.
After gaining her freedom, Tubman dedicated her life to abolishing slavery and helped approximately 70 enslaved Black Americans escape to freedom in the North, according to PBS.
Janell Hobson, a professor of women’s studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York, told CNN that Tubman is “one of our greatest American heroes and definitely the greatest liberator in this nation.”
“I hope that National Parks Service realizes they owe it to her and other heroes like her to stand in the truth of what this history has been,” Hobson said.
But, the NPS pushed back against criticism over the move.
“We have dozens of pages about Harriet Tubman celebrating and memorializing her impressive role in American history,” an NPS spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “The idea that a couple of 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 controversy surrounding changes to Tubman’s webpage followed President Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI in federal hiring, programs and contracts during his first weeks in office.
As a result, thousands of news and feature articles, photos and videos deemed to promote DEI were removed from several Pentagon websites, according to a statement from the Department of Defense.
The words “transgender” and “queer” have also been removed from the National Park Service’s webpage about the Stonewall Monument in New York City, which triggered protests in February, CNN reported.
Last month, the web pages for baseball legend and World War II army veteran Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers’ were removed from the Department of Defense’s (DOD) website, NPR reported.
However, the DOD later restored them after a public outcry, NPR reported.
Stories by Vashti Harris
Mosaic staff writer Vashti Harris can be reached at [email protected].
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