How the Trump Administration Made Government Websites White Again

The administration appears to have changed, deleted and restricted access to resources related to Black history from government websites.

(Envato/ContrabandCamp)

Anyone searching for an example of institutional racism can look no further than the U.S. Armed Forces.

Black Americans have fought in every war in this nation’s history. Compared to their white counterparts, Black Americans are twice as likely to serve their country in the U.S. military. Despite defending this country more than any other racial or ethnic demographic, Black veterans have also faced racism throughout this nation’s history. As the leader of the Continental Army and the first president, George Washington reneged on the country’s promises to African Americans who fought in the American Revolution. They were barred from fighting for the Union in the Civil War. Black veterans returning from home after World War I caused an outbreak of racial terrorism called the Red Summer of 1919. White World War II veterans were rewarded for their service with free college tuition and low-interest mortgages; Black veterans were excluded. While some may characterize these historical facts as critical race theory or DEI, they come from a reputable source:

The United States Army.

When the Trump administration’s DEI-hunters removed tributes to Medal of Honor recipient Charles Rogers, baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson and the Tuskegee Airmen from the Department of Defense website, they were dishonoring the legacy of this country’s heroes. Fortunately, the pages were later restored after a public outcry.

While the DoD refused to say whether the removal was deliberate or a simple mistake, few noticed the slight changes to the pages. The URL to Rogers’ page now contained the words “deimedal.” Some pages never returned. More importantly, the U.S. Army’s official site, detailing the stories, accounts and contributions of Black veterans, no longer exists.

The U.S. Army’s now-deceased site on the history of Black soldiers is just one of dozens of online resources that have disappeared from the government websites since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term. Using the End of Term Archive, The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, screenshots and cached pages, ContrabandCamp has found more than 200 examples of content related to race, Black history or discrimination that have been altered or deleted from government websites.

In some cases, the administration has restricted online access to historical documents. Some research has been relocated to sites that can only be found by a skilled researcher; other pages have been completely erased. The whitewashing effort includes government agencies tasked with preserving history. And in every case, the resources were publicly accessible when Donald Trump took office.

Then they vanished.

Take Cathay Williams, for example. In 1866, Williams became the first Black woman to officially enlist in the U..S military (Harriet Tubman was not an official enlistee). On Nov. 28, 2024, anyone could click on the U.S. Army’s website and read how Williams dressed as a man to serve with the infamous Buffalo Soldiers. Today, the page recognizing the Army’s first Black female soldier results in a 404 error. The Army’s tribute to Black World War I hero and Medal of Honor recipient Henry Johnson hasn’t been deleted. At one time, a user could scroll to the “Army.mil Resources” section at the bottom of the page, click the link labeled “African Americans in the U.S. Army,” and read a comprehensive history cataloguing 250 years of Black servicemembers, complete with profiles, a timeline, and historical documents. According to the Wayback Machine, it was working as of January 26, 2025.

Now it leads to a dead end.

Now that “diversity” has been purged from the U.S. military and its websites, some may wonder if preserving and teaching history is even part of the Army’s responsibilities. In 1943, the U.S. Army established the Center of Military History, a formal branch of the U.S. Army under the Department of Defense. While that information has also been deleted from the web, the CMH still exists. Since Trump took office, the department has deleted some parts of history that it deemed unimportant. Many of the links lead back to the Army.mil front page. Others are completely gone. To be fair, they didn’t even bother to delete the references to the history of Black women veterans.

On the left, the U.S. Army Center for Military History page with working hyperlinks on African Americans in the Army was captured on Jan. 24, 2025. On the right, the same page with the links missing, as captured on Feb. 24, 2025. (Courtesy of Archive.org)

The military is not the only entity fighting this war to erase Black history. The agency specifically tasked with protecting our nation’s history is also participating in this effort to whitewash America’s story.

In 2020, the National Archives began a blog series called “Rediscovering Black History,” dedicated to “sharing records relating to the Black Experience.” Not only did the scholars and employees stop publishing posts in December 2024, but since then, many of the blog posts have vanished, including posts on the Tulsa Race Massacre and racial violence during Reconstruction. Some have been deleted altogether—even if you search in the now-missing section of “Rediscovering Black History” titled “civil unrest.” Others have been altered, but can still be found under the department’s general blog, known as the “Text Message.” The reconfigured Black history section explains how African-Americans were “supportive” when the country entered WWI. Unsurprisingly, the page explaining how Black WWI vets were lynched during the Red Summer of 1919 was deleted.

It was last captured on Feb. 10, 2025, less than three weeks after Trump took office.

ContrabandCamp found dozens of examples of this, including historical documents that were available online. Before Feb. 2, 2025, you could easily find primary sources of white supremacist insurrectionists surrendering after committing treason against their country. Today, the Library of Congress “can’t find” the 1865 part of its Civil War timeline. Months before Trump administration officials ordered a review of Smithsonian Institution exhibits, someone deleted a page on the website for the National Museum of African American History and Culture titled “Talking About Race.” The resource providing “tools and guidance” to empower teachers and educators was up and running the day before Trump’s inauguration. Now it redirects to a generic “teaching and learning” page.

This whitewashing of this nation’s past does not just affect teachers, history-curious citizens and people who are genuinely interested in learning the truth of this nation’s past. Considering the intentional misinformation and white supremacist rhetoric that exists on social media and the internet at large, the Trump administration’s Black purge not only erases the history of Black American heroes; it provides a breeding ground where white supremacist falsehoods from the past can flourish. In the absence of trustworthy objective sources, Jillian Michaels’ historical expertise is as valid as Elon Musk’s whitesplaining how slavery “was almost entirely ended principally by Anglo-American forces.”

Perhaps this is why the National Archives celebrated Black History Month with a message on Thomas Sowell, the Black conservative economist who lives in Florida’s anti-woke curriculum, Trump proclamations and the hearts and minds of every white person who never read a book by an economist. Although these Caucasian scholars (and, apparently, the National Archives) have never heard of great Black scholars like William “Sandy” Darity, Julianne Malveaux or Andre Perry, if Black people had a dollar for every white person who mentioned Thomas Sowell, we wouldn’t need reparations.

Among the historical files and web pages that the Trump administration has deleted, altered or restricted the public from accessing are:

• Hundreds of Census Bureau files, including instructions to 1930 census workers to count mixed race people as Negro, “no matter how small the percentage of negro blood.”

• Letters in the National Archives referencing the internment of Japanese Americans.

• The Congressional Record transcripts of a debate over the 14th Amendment.

• The National Archives Museum workers revised an online exhibit on the Founders debating slavery because it “portrayed the founders in a negative light.”

• A Joint Select Committee record of violence in the “insurrectionary states” can be found on other sites, but can no longer be downloaded via the Library of Congress site.

“It’s extremely disheartening and disturbing to know that this administration can literally make a history disappear,” actual scholar Nikole Hannah-Jones told ContrabandCamp. “They can’t erase the past, but you can’t disentangle this from the efforts to ban books, censor teachers and rewrite school curricula.”

Citing efforts like the Smithsonian review and Oklahoma’s “America First Test” that ensures educators teach a Trump-approved version of history, Hannah-Jones noted that deleting Black people and their stories from the nation’s official record is tantamount to the government declaring that some people’s histories are less valuable than others. Fortunately, The 1619 Project creator also offered a cure for the online virus that is making American history white again.

We are the solution.

Just as individuals, independent journalists and nonprofit agencies are creating shadow websites to track the Trump administration’s attack on the environment, research grants and higher education, ordinary citizens have the power to hold this government accountable. Download and catalog documents before they disappear. Become familiar with the Wayback Machine’s process for archiving websites. Email and call individual agencies whenever something vanishes. Let journalists know. Warn teachers.

“We have a federal government that is being weaponized against Black people to convince white Americans that they are the primary victims of race discrimination,” Hannah-Jones explained, adding:

“If they can erase your history, they can erase your rights.”