Recently (before the federal government shutdown), I was able to visit the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, which I’d been hoping to do for a long time.

It was a great visit. The grounds were gorgeous, and we had an excellent tour guide who took us through the house where Roosevelt lived in much of her later life. We learned about Eleanor’s childhood, education, marriage and family, other relationships, writings, and community and political activities.

Eleanor hosted all sorts of visitors to her home – royalty, Nehru, Hollywood stars, friends like Pauli Murray, and JFK hoping for an endorsement (which eventually she gave, reluctantly). You can learn more about her life on the cultural landscape page.

The site included a biographical video, small exhibits, and walking trails that she traversed regularly. I especially enjoyed seeing some of her powerful quotations highlighted. Yes, I even bought a t-shirt and magnet featuring two of them.

Our tour began in front of placards about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she saw as her proudest achievement. Eleanor had chaired the United Nations committee that drafted the declaration, which in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, aimed to find common ground among diverse nations and cultures about individual rights. Getting it passed was extremely difficult. 

I found the visit inspiring in many ways – except for one. It was clear that National Park Historic sites are feeling the chilling effects of the Trump Administration’s desire to control messages about American history. 

We saw a table with a card featuring a QR code where visitors were encouraged to offer feedback on their visit. At first glance, it seemed innocent enough; after all, historic sites should be open to feedback. 

However, the card specifically encouraged visitors to report if the site conveyed any information that was “negative about either past or living Americans or that failed to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” Basically it was asking visitors to rat out historic sites that shared overly liberal truths about the past and any site that suggested the nation faces environmental problems. 

Every NHS site is required to post this sign and QR code, and the sign is part of the President’s effort to “restore truth and sanity to American history,” as his March 2025 Executive Order put it. The order claimed that there had been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” These revisionists, he claims, have sought to undermine the remarkable achievements of the U.S. by casting them in a negative light.

Many NPS rangers are seasonal workers who must reapply for their jobs annually. Now – under the new administration – the application essay prompts include one that asks how the rangers would advance the President’s executive orders. Supposedly these essays are now optional, but understandably suspicious, some federal employee unions have sued the Office of Personnel Management over this “thinly veiled” political loyalty test.

All exhibit signage at National Park Service sites is now subject to federal government scrutiny. In a June 2025 memo, NPS comptroller Doug Burgum directed the National Park Service to conduct a review of any negative content in public-facing images and descriptions. (The memo was leaked to NPR.)

It’s clear which sorts of history are unacceptable to the current administration: Acknowledging the nation’s racist past and the existence of trans people are especially problematic, but so is admitting negative events or actions.

Seriously, what nation hasn’t done things that in retrospect many of its citizens regret? Doesn’t every elementary school student know that one can’t learn from the past unless one understands it?

Examples of the censorship

• Exhibits surrounding the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia were flagged by the administration, including one that mentioned the “systemic and violent racism and sexism that existed at the time” the bell moved in the 19th century. Also flagged there were displays noting the contentious relationship between the U.S. and Native American tribes. These were reported in an article in The Independent.
  
  The Philadelphia Citizen pointed out the irony in such censorship – since the Liberty Bell got its name from abolitionists who were pointing out the contradiction between the ideals of the American Revolution and the enslavement of four million people.

• Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia, a Civil War site, was instructed to remove a powerful and famous 1863 photograph of former slave Peter Gordon, whose back was criss-crossed with thick scars from many whippings. CBS News reported that at first a White House spokesman said it was “fake news,” but then admitted the image was under review.
  
  In the 19th century, Americans saw this image and were disturbed by the irrefutable evidence of the cruelty of slavery. Is it possible that 21st century Americans are so sensitive that they can’t handle facts about events from over 160 years ago?

• At Harpers Ferry National Historical Park more than 30 signs documenting slavery and racism were slated for removal. Harpers Ferry is where the white abolitionist John Brown raided a federal armory hoping to free slaves in Virginia and wage a war against the institution of slavery. Brown’s controversial actions accelerated sectional tensions leading to the Civil War, because unlike other abolitionists, Brown believed moral suasion would not work, and that “the crimes of this guilty land” would never be purged without bloodshed.

• The Stonewall National Monument, site of resistance against a police raid of a gay bar, was the first NPS site to honor LGBTQIA+ Americans. The site pointed out that trans activists of color like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson had fought on the front lines of the efforts in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s demanding equal rights and respectful treatment. According to a press release from Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY), in February, the NPS deleted content mentioning transgender and queer Americans from the monument and its web page.
  
  This erasure was also consistent with another Executive Order from January 20, 2025, which ordered government recognition of only two sexes, biological male and female. That order asserted that federal agencies should remove statements acknowledging people with “self-assessed gender identity” and those promoting “gender ideology.”

• At Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials were scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside the Spanish stone fortress. The New York Times (7/22/25) reported that the exhibit in question accurately said tribes in the late 19th century had to choose between extinction or assimilation.

NPS staff are unsure what is acceptable.

• At the Stones River National Battlefield, a plaque describes slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War. A staff member who noted that the text was “historically correct” asked for further review to confirm it was aligned with the executive order. At Cane River Historical Park an official was concerned because an exhibit identified the names of enslavers and mentioned that slaves who had tried to escape were whipped. (NYT, 7/22/25)

• At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, one panel of an exhibit about nine slaves George Washington brought with him emphasized the intentional brutality (whippings, torture, and rape) that slaves were subject to. A staff member raised the question of whether it was okay.

• At the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park, a three-panel exhibit on the history of the LGBTQ community in the Bay Area during World War II was removed. But then a few days later it reappeared. A staff spokesperson refused to share any info about what had occurred.

Understandably, staff are wary.  A ranger told me that people have recorded the tours they conduct, which further contributes to the climate of intimidation. “Morale at parks is very low,” reported Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Responses and Resistance

Communities are also concerned about government censorship – especially communities whose members have often been left out of historical accounts.

Community members marched at Manzanar National Historic Site in an effort to preserve the difficult truths it shares with the public. Opened in 2004, Manzanar explains and commemorates the over 120,000+ Japanese and Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during the climate of racial fear and hatred during World War II.

“I feel they’re going to make it so I don’t have a voice for my mother — that I won’t be able to tell her story,” 81-year-old Pat Sakamoto told KCRW.  Sakamoto’s mother was forcibly removed from her home in Los Angeles to one of the government internment camps, where Pat was born.

How is it possible for a historic site NOT to say something negative at a place where citizens were placed in camps based on xenophobia?

Over 600 volunteers in a group called Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian have proactively photographed and filmed exhibits in the 21 Smithsonian museums and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in case they are removed or changed. Within a month, they had over 25,000 photographs.

At Harpers Ferry, protestors of the executive order held signs saying, “Hands Off Our History” and “You Can’t Censor History.”

Obviously, historians are concerned. “I don’t know how you can have a better future without looking honestly at the past,” Black civil rights movement scholar Clayborne Carson told the New York Times (7/22/2025). He wished that such problems in facing our racist past were behind us, but noted that Americans have long had difficulty with it.

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) issued a Statement on the Executive Order on ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It called the order “a disturbing attack on core institutions and the public presentation of history, and indeed on historians and history itself.”

I see the Executive Order as part and parcel of the administration’s attack on experts with specialized knowledge. In this case the targets are professional historians, who spend many years being trained to unearth, respect, and carefully interpret facts. 

In other cases, it is scientists (e.g., climate researchers, nutritionists, epidemiologists, medical researchers) who understand inconvenient truths (as Al Gore put it). In other cases, it is economists who provide data related to jobs, employment, or the impact of tariffs. The common denominator is that the President tries to make information he doesn’t like disappear.

The OAH statement noted that the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service offer an evidence-based, comprehensive understanding and public presentation of the history of the U.S. Similarly, the American Historical Association statement about the order pointed out that it misconstrues the nature of historical work.

We draw on a wide range of sources, which helps us to understand history from different angles of vision. Our goal is neither criticism nor celebration; it is to understand—to increase our knowledge of—the past in ways that can help Americans to shape the future.

The OAH condemned the administration’s effort to suppress the voices of historically excluded groups and to “rewrite history to reflect a glorified narrative that downplays or disappears elements of America’s history – slavery, segregation, discrimination, division.” Rather than a return to “sanity” (a word used in the title of the Executive Order), the OAH sees sanitiz[ing] to destroy truth. Because the past actually is quite complex and multi-faceted, professional historians resist efforts to flatten history into a single celebratory story.

Both the triumphs and the tragedies go into making us who we are as individuals, who we are as members of valued communities and cultures, and who we are as a nation. Telling as complete a story as possible should always be recognized as an indispensable part of the public’s educational landscape, fostering an environment where critical thinking and a deep engagement with history are not just encouraged, but expected.

The OAH concluded by calling for the independence of Smithsonian and national parks – freedom from political interference or restrictions based on any ideology. Its members believe that the President’s effort has enormous negative implications:

Knowledge is power, and when that knowledge is censored or distorted, democracy itself is weakened.

The language of the executive order about revisionists “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth” would be humorous in its irony if it weren’t so dangerous. After all, the administration is pushing an ideologically-driven narrative – one reminiscent of how textbooks related the past in the 1950s.

Censorship is so unAmerican. I find it quite distressing.

What would Eleanor say?

To circle back to Eleanor Roosevelt, I gathered from some of her famous quotations that she sometimes struggled with being anxious and afraid. Despite this, she told others (and presumably herself):

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”

We can’t know for sure how Eleanor would feel, but I suspect she might have identified with people today who feel paralyzed or overwhelmed by the speed with which democratic institutions and traditions (such as the Smithsonian, National Parks, a free press, freedom of speech, birthright citizenship, separation of church and state, separation of powers, higher education, etc.) are being undermined.

To us, she might point out: 

Nothing has been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time meeting each thing that comes up…discovering we have the strength to face it down.