The National Park Service has restored a webpage about the Underground Railroad that prominently featured Harriet Tubman following backlash over the website changes.
NPS recently garnered criticism from media and a U.S. senator when reports surfaced alleging that it edited a webpage about the Underground Railroad to remove a photo of Tubman and a quote of hers, as well as water down the references to racial slavery.
The Underground Railroad was a network of places and groups before the American Civil War that helped enslaved African Americans escape slavery, often by having them flee north to Canada. Tubman was a prominent participant.
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For example, while the original website introduced the Underground Railroad as “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight,” the edited version introduced it as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement during its evolution over more than three centuries.”
However, NPS reversed most of the changes, as a visit to the webpage on Wednesday morning once again shows Tubman prominently featured and the original description of the Underground Railroad.
NPS spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz stated in an email late Monday that the changes were made without official approval, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service’s website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership,” said Pawlitz. “The webpage was immediately restored to its original content.”
The Washington Post published a review on Sunday of various NPS webpages that had been apparently edited since President Donald Trump took office in January, including the Underground Railroad page.
The newspaper reports that dozens of NPS website pages had “softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past,” such as slavery and segregation.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., accused the Trump administration of trying to “rewrite the history of the Underground Railroad” and “diminishing its conductor,” Tubman, a Maryland native.
“The Underground Railroad is an important part of the American story,” Van Hollen wrote in an X post reacting to the report. “We cannot let him whitewash it as part of his larger effort to erase our history.”
NPS initially defended the changes to the Underground Railroad page, saying in a statement to The Hill on Monday that Tubman was still well-represented on the website.
“We have dozens of pages about Harriet Tubman celebrating and memorializing her impressive role in American history,” an NPS spokesperson stated.
“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 and belies the extensive websites, social media posts, and programs we offer about Harriet Tubman specifically and Black History as a whole.”
Last month, NPS garnered criticism for removing the official biography of The Rev. Pauli Murray, a liberal activist who was the first black woman to be ordained in The Episcopal Church, and reportedly omitting references to her “transgender and queer identities” on some web pages.
In response to the allegations of censorship, an NPS spokesperson told The Christian Post last month that they did so because they were implementing two orders on the issue of gender ideology.
The first was Trump’s “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order, which officially declares that there are only two sexes.
“Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages,” noted one provision of the order.
The other was an order from Acting Secretary of the Interior Walter Cruickshank titled “Ending DEI Programs and Gender Ideology Extremism,” which was built off of the Trump executive order.
Cruickshank ordered that all department offices “shall immediately cease any and all equity-related activities, under any name or characterization that they may appear.”
