Hands Off Our History: Harriet, Erasure, and the South’s Fight for Truth
From quiet removals to threats against slavery exhibits, a coordinated campaign is unfolding - one that aims to rewrite and silence the truths America still hasn't reckoned with.
Over the past 48 hours, a series of targeted changes to federal institutions have sparked widespread criticism. In a quiet but striking revision, the National Park Service recently altered its official Underground Railroad website — removing a prominent photograph of Harriet Tubman and softening references to slavery. The changes, uncovered by The Washington Post, have sparked backlash among historians, educators, and civil rights advocates.
Then on April 7, journalist April Ryan confirmed that the Trump administration is now targeting slavery exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The exhibits, which document 250 years of enslavement, are reportedly in the administration’s crosshairs ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“Black people are not going to stand for this,” Nikole Hannah Jones, the author of the 1619 Project, tells Black Press USA. “I think that this is a sign of a deep sickness to think that you could go to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture and feel the need to erase how Black people got here.”
UPDATE: Following public backlash, the National Park Service restored its original Underground Railroad webpage on April 7. According to CNN, the agency said the reduced mention of Tubman had been made without approval by top leadership.
A Legacy Too Radical for Comfort
Gone is the clear description of the Underground Railroad as “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight.” In its place, the website now reads: “One of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement during its evolution over more than three centuries. The Underground Railroad bridged the divides of race, religion, and region.”
The shift sounds proper to someone who doesn’t know any better — it sounds fine until you realize there is no mention of bondage. No language about escape. And no central image of Tubman, the woman who led dozens to freedom and inspired thousands more.
“Why would the administration rewrite the narrative of the Underground Railroad in the National Parks?” Gerald Griggs, attorney and Georgia NAACP President, asked on Twitter.
Tubman’s life has never fit neatly into America’s preferred historical narratives. What made her dangerous in life is what makes her threatening in memory: she didn’t wait to be freed — she freed herself, and many others. Born enslaved in Maryland, Tubman defied the institution that claimed her body and dignity.
She returned to the South time and again to lead missions of escape. She served as a Union scout and eventually led the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, freeing 700 enslaved people — the only woman to lead a U.S. military raid in history.
Her story is one of action and insurrection, not patience or politics. And that is precisely why so many institutions, then and now, struggle to tell it honestly.
And the threat isn’t limited to websites. The Trump administration is now targeting slavery exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. — calling into question whether institutions tasked with preserving Black history will be allowed to continue doing so truthfully.
The museum’s artifacts and historical documentation of 250 years of enslavement are reportedly “the bull’s-eye” for the administration’s revisionist campaign, according to BlackPressUSA. The timing — just one day after the National Park Service’s Tubman edits were exposed — is no coincidence.
The South and the Battle Over Memory
Across the South, the erasure of Black resistance—especially when led by Black women — is being hardcoded into policy and curriculum.
In Florida, officials approved new curriculum standards suggesting that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” And early versions of an elementary lesson on Rosa Parks removed all mention of her race to avoid violating the state’s “Stop WOKE” law. In South Carolina, the pending H.3728 bill would ban teaching concepts that could cause “guilt” around race or identity—a veiled attempt to erase honest accounts of slavery, Jim Crow, and the women who fought them.
Even at the college level, pressure from Republican governors led to the removal of key Black feminist scholars — Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, and Angela Davis—from the AP African American Studies pilot program.
Meanwhile, a sweeping wave of book bans has targeted works by and about Black women. According to PEN America, over 10,000 books were banned in the 2023–2024 school year, with Southern states like Florida, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina leading the way. Books about Harriet Tubman, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde were among those pulled for being “divisive.”
What Americans Don’t Know — By Design
This imbalance extends to public spaces as well. The Equal Justice Initiative reports that over 1,700 Confederate monuments remain standing across the South, while there are fewer than 20 public statues of Harriet Tubman in the entire nation. Many Southern states have none at all.
Now, that same intent is reaching federal institutions. “To erase or minimize the slavery and freedom part of that story is to create a fantasy of how we got here,” Hannah-Jones tells Black Press USA. “We literally would not be in the United States without slavery.”
A Pew Research survey found that only 38% of Americans could correctly identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. A Southern Poverty Law Center study showed just 8% of high school seniors knew this fact. Nearly 60% of teachers said their textbooks inadequately address slavery, and only 39% felt supported by their state to teach the topic honestly.
But these numbers don’t just reflect ignorance — they reflect deliberate policy decisions about what is taught, what is omitted, and who is remembered.
Resistance, Still
Harriet Tubman’s story — and the story of slavery — have never been easy to absorb — because it disrupts the lies we’ve told about American freedom. The NPS may have reversed course, but that doesn’t erase the intent. While I knew in some profound way that we would fight back and win —if I’m honest, we don’t need these institutions to remember. We are now in a position to take control of how we got here.
These attempts were tried too late — we can no longer be erased.
The latest attacks are just part of a longer, calculated campaign to soften history, to whitewash the brutality of slavery, and to push the South’s violent past into a more sanitized corner of public memory. And given today’s political climate, this will not be the last attempt.
But Tubman’s legacy and the legacy of how we got here belong to the people, not the politics. And we don’t need their institutions to remember our resistance.
13 & South is a new publication covering news, investigative stories, and insights on social justice, policy, and systemic inequities impacting Southern Black communities. I value your insights, and feedback and invite your perspectives to contribute to future issues. Please feel free to contact me here or follow me on my socials! LinkedIn, Twitter, IG, BlueSky, and Threads.
Trump, can try to erase History but Black History will never be erased!! He’s not informed enough to know, that’s where all History begin!!!! In other words, if it wasn’t for Black history there would be no history, period!!
History has to be protected. History is the most important thing to be preserved for now and future generations. Without History we have no roots. Everything has to be done to protect it and preserve it.