An image and quote from the American abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman were removed from a web parks page page on the “Underground Railroad” after several important changes to government sites under Trump administration.
Tubman was a liberated slave who risked his life countless times to smuggle other slaves to the north in the years before the civil war. The smuggling was done through the Underground Railroad, a secret network of strokes and hiding places in the United States, enslaved to flee to free states.
During the war, Harriet Tubman was a spy helping to gather vital information to the Union Army.
The Underground Railroad National Park Service Web page started with a tubman quote, showed a comparison on Wayback Machine between the web page on January 21 and March 19.
Both the quote and an image of Tubman have been removed since, along with various references to “enslaved” people and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed authorities in non -slave states to capture and return runaway slaves to their owners.
The web page now starts with commemorative stamps from various civil rights leaders with text including the phrase “Black/White Cooperation”.
While earlier the article began with a description of the efforts of enslaved people to break free and the organization of underground Railroad after the Fugitive Slave Act, the article now begins with two paragraphs that emphasize “American ideals of freedom” and do not specifically mention slavery.
Tubman removal from the Underground Railroad page “is offensive and absurd,” said Fergus Bordus, historian and author, CNN On Sunday. He described the new web page as “diminished in value for its brevity.”
“To simplify the story is to distort it,” Bordewich continued. “Americans are not children: they can deal with complex and challenging historical narratives. They do not need to be protected from the truth.”
Janell Hobson, Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Albany, New York State University, described Tubman as “one of our greatest American heroines and definitely the largest liberator of this nation” in an email to CNN .
“I hope the National Parks Service realizes that it owes her and other heroes like her to defend the truth of what this story has been,” she said.
There is a separate page dedicated to Harriet Tubman, who was born slave in Maryland before fleeing to Philadelphia. She returned to Maryland more than a dozen times to help free other slaves, guiding them by the underground Railroad, a secret network of secure routes and houses.
The tubman page has not been changed since January 28, 2025.
THE CNN contacted the National Parks Service to comment.
Other controversial changes have been seen on government websites in recent months, as the Trump government promotes a campaign to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion.
The removal of the words “transgender” and “queer” from a web page from the National Park Service on the Stonewall Monument in New York City triggered protests in February.
In March, the Pentagon apparently removed a page about Jackie Robinson, the pioneering baseball player who became the first black athlete of Major League Baseball in the modern era. Subsequently, the page was restored,
Articles on topics apparently not related to Dei – including the Holocaust, cancer awareness and sexual aggression – were also removed from the pentagon’s web pages.
Pentagon officials were instructed to research keywords such as “racism”, “ethnicity”, “LGBTQ”, “history” and “first” by identifying articles and photos to remove, several defense authorities previously said to CNN .
In his second term, President Donald Trump has taken several measures to take control of American cultural and historical institutions, destroying the curators of the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC and aiming at Smithsonian Institution in an executive order in late March.
The US President specifically identified the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum as bearers of exhibitions and language promoters that he considered inappropriate.
This content was originally published in US government removes references to Site Abolitionist on Slavery on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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