Arlington Cemetery website scrubs pages about Black, Hispanic and women veterans, history
Arlington National Cemetery has purged its website of pages about notable Black, Hispanic and women veterans, as well as information about the Civil War and Black history, as the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to remove references to “diversity and inclusion” on government webpages.
Among the pages that have disappeared from the cemetery’s website include links on the graves of prominent minority veterans, as well as educational pages on the Civil War, African American history and women’s history. Some of the information has been removed outright, while others were placed under categories that do not mention race or gender.
An archived version of the website’s educational page on African American history at the cemetery, for example, features a range of learning materials on the Civil Rights Movement and Black war heroes. That information no longer appears on the page.
An unnamed cemetery spokesperson told The Washington Post that links to webpages listing “Notable Graves” of Black, Hispanic and female veterans were taken down, and that the cemetery is working to make sure that content on its website complies with the administration’s policies.
First reported by Civil War historian Kevin M. Levin and the military news publication Task & Purpose, the change follows Trump’s assault on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government.
The anti-DEI push has had a huge impact on the Defense Department in particular, where Secretary Pete Hegseth has vowed to get rid of what he calls “wokeness” in the military. Trump also fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, the second Black man to hold the top military position, and pushed out Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the head of the U.S. Navy and the first woman to lead any branch of the armed forces.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth told Pentagon staff just days after being confirmed as defense secretary.
Since then, the Defense Intelligence Agency has banned all activities related to cultural heritage celebrations, including Black History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, National American Indian Heritage Month, LGBTQ Pride Month, Women’s History Month, Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Pentagon is also seeking to bar trans people from serving in the military.
In February, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote a memo ordering officials to “remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” by March 5. The Associated Press reported last week that the Pentagon has marked for removal more than 26,000 images of veterans from a diverse range of backgrounds and identities — which included an image of a B-29 aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II, the AP reported, because it was named “Enola Gay.”
