An image and quote from Harriet Tubman have been removed from a National Park Service webpage on the “Underground Railroad,” amid a wave of controversial updates to government websites under the Trump administration.
A comparison via the Wayback Machine shows that the National Park Service’s “Underground Railroad” page, which previously opened with a Tubman quote and portrait, was altered between January 21 and March 19. The revisions removed Tubman’s image and quote, references to “enslaved” individuals, and mentions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
The Washington Post was first to report the changes. The page now begins with a section on commemorative stamps of civil rights leaders and a phrase emphasizing “Black/White Cooperation.” Previously, the page opened with details about enslaved people seeking freedom and the formation of the Underground Railroad after the Fugitive Slave Act. These have been replaced by broader references to “American ideals of liberty and freedom,” with no direct mention of slavery in the introduction.
Historian Fergus Bordewich, author of a book on the Underground Railroad, called Tubman’s removal “both offensive and absurd” in a statement to CNN. He said the updated page is “diminished in value by its brevity.”
“To oversimplify history is to distort it,” Bordewich added. “Americans are not children—they can confront complex and difficult narratives. Shielding them from truth does a disservice.”
Janell Hobson, professor of women’s studies at the University at Albany, SUNY, referred to Tubman as “one of our greatest American heroes, and certainly the greatest liberator this nation has known,” in an email to CNN.
“I hope the National Park Service understands the responsibility they have to honor Tubman and other heroes by presenting history truthfully,” she wrote.
A separate National Park Service page dedicated to Harriet Tubman—who escaped slavery in Maryland, fled to Philadelphia, and returned over a dozen times to rescue others—remains online. That page, which details her leadership along the Underground Railroad, does not appear to have changed since January 28, 2025.
CNN has contacted the National Park Service for comment.
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The Tubman edits come as part of a wider rollback of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) content across U.S. government websites under President Trump’s second term. In February, the removal of the words “transgender” and “queer” from a National Park Service page about the Stonewall Monument in New York sparked protests.
In March, the Pentagon removed and later restored a webpage about Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball. Other unrelated topics—such as Holocaust remembrance, cancer awareness, and sexual assault—have also vanished from Pentagon websites.
Multiple defense officials told CNN that Pentagon staff were instructed to identify and remove content based on keywords such as “racism,” “ethnicity,” “LGBTQ,” “history,” and “first.”
President Trump has also taken further steps to assert control over American cultural institutions. He recently overhauled the board of trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and issued an executive order in March targeting the Smithsonian Institution.
That order named the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum as promoting language deemed “inappropriate” by the administration.