Is the Donald Trump Administration trying to erase black history? (Photo: AFP)
April 15, 2025
The history they fear is the truth we carry
Dear Editor,
My grandmother was born in 1916. Her grandparents were born into slavery. She fought Jim Crow. She stood up for black teachers and students in a segregated school system in which she taught in her early career.
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That’s the kind of strength I come from. That’s the kind of history it seems the Donald Trump Administration now wants to erase.
The Washington Post and other outlets are reporting that the Trump Administration’s scorched-earth campaign to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from every corner of our federal government has now spread. Web pages about slavery and the Underground Railroad have been edited to downplay the brutal reality of bondage and the contributions of black leaders.
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Heroic Americans gave their lives fighting for freedom and equality. Now the Trump Administration is trying to edit those very words out of the official American story.
Some say these changes are minor. I say they are surgical. They are subtle, yes, but profoundly damaging. As one historian put it, these edits suggest that racism no longer needs to be confronted in America. And that’s the point.
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This is not about saving space on a government website. It is about shrinking the story of who we are as a people.
We’ve seen this before. Last month, we learned that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s DEI purge at the Pentagon included deleting photos and posts about the Tuskegee Airmen. That hit home. Two of my grandfather’s first cousins were Tuskegee Airmen. Those men risked everything for a country that treated them as second-class citizens — and now this Administration is reluctant to give them even a photo and a caption.
A recent executive order from President Trump set its sights on the Smithsonian. They are targeting the very museums created to tell the full story of our country. What does this mean for the very existence of the National Museum of African American History and Culture? Or the National Museum of the American Indian?
What happens to truth when it is inconvenient to power?
We cannot rely on oral tradition alone. Our history deserves permanence. It deserves pages and plaques and national monuments and memorials. It deserves official recognition, not redaction.
History is power. That’s why they are going after it.
The Trump Administration’s attacks are not about race-blind policy. They are about race-based erasure. They support monuments to those who fought to preserve slavery while censoring stories of resistance. That’s not colour-blindness. That’s complicity.
It should not have to keep being said over and over, but we will not let them diminish our communities’ contributions or deny our place in the American story. We are still here. Our resolve is real. And it is rising.
Ben Jealous
Director of the Sierra Club
