WASHINGTON – The National Park Service has reversed edits and restored content to its webpage about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad in the wake of news reports and public backlash over the changes.
“Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service’s website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership," NPS spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz said late Monday in an email. "The webpage was immediately restored to its original content.”
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She did not say who ordered the changes or for what reason. The changes — first reported by The Washington Post — included removing Tubman's picture from the top of the page and making multiple edits to the text. A side-by-side analysis of the pages, using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, revealed changes that removed references to slavery and changed descriptions about the issue and its brutal realities.
For example, the original opening sentence referenced the railroad's core role in “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight.” The edited version called the railroad “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement” and described how it “bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality.”
The issue comes amid sweeping government changes to comply with President Donald Trump's campaign against so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government. In some cases, officials have scrambled to remove and then restore online content as changes came to light.
Trump has also targeted the Smithsonian network of museums, which includes the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He has tasked Vice President JD Vance with heading up the effort to purge what Trump termed “improper ideology” in the Smithsonian's depictions of American history.
Among the public controversies has been the Pentagon's wholesale deletions of pages related to the Navajo Code Talkers' contributions in World War II and baseball legend Jackie Robinson's military career. Both of those pages were quickly restored when the deletions drew public outcry.
When the Harriet Tubman edits first came to light, NPS officials acknowledged the changes but denied any intention to downplay her role or soften the realities of America's history with slavery.
“We celebrate her as a deeply spiritual woman who lived her ideals and dedicated her life to freedom," Pawlitz said, citing dozens of pages about her, as well as two parks named for her. “The idea that a couple web edits somehow invalidate the National Park Service’s commitment to telling complex and challenging historical narratives is completely false.”
The revelation of the NPS edits drew an immediate backlash from civil rights figures. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., posted on Instagram Monday that the changes constitute “an attack on truth, an attempt to erase history that would help us improve society today, a refusal to be uncomfortable.”