{"id":10554,"date":"2025-04-09T21:01:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T21:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/national-park-service-restores-original-harriet-tubman-underground-railroad-webpage\/"},"modified":"2025-04-09T21:01:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T21:01:43","slug":"national-park-service-restores-original-harriet-tubman-underground-railroad-webpage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/national-park-service-restores-original-harriet-tubman-underground-railroad-webpage\/","title":{"rendered":"National Park Service restores original Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad webpage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cChanges to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service\u2019s website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership,\u201d NPS spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz said late Monday in an email. \u201cThe webpage was immediately restored to its original content.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did not say who ordered the changes or for what reason. The changes \u2014 first reported by The Washington Post \u2014 included removing Tubman\u2019s 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\u2019s Wayback Machine, revealed changes that removed references to slavery and changed descriptions about the issue and its brutal realities.<\/p>\n

For example, the original opening sentence referenced the railroad\u2019s core role in \u201cthe resistance to enslavement through escape and flight.\u201d The edited version called the railroad \u201cone of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement\u201d and described how it \u201cbridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue comes amid sweeping government changes to comply with President Donald Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cimproper ideology\u201d in the Smithsonian\u2019s depictions of American history.<\/p>\n

Among the public controversies has been the Pentagon\u2019s wholesale deletions of pages related to the Navajo Code Talkers\u2019 contributions in World War II and baseball legend Jackie Robinson\u2019s military career. Both of those pages were quickly restored when the deletions drew public outcry.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s history with slavery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe celebrate her as a deeply spiritual woman who lived her ideals and dedicated her life to freedom,\u201d Pawlitz said, citing dozens of pages about her, as well as two parks named for her. \u201cThe idea that a couple web edits somehow invalidate the National Park Service\u2019s commitment to telling complex and challenging historical narratives is completely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201can attack on truth, an attempt to erase history that would help us improve society today, a refusal to be uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Park Service has reversed edits and restored content to its webpage about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7282,"featured_media":10555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}