Arlington National Cemetery needs to stop burying history on its website

Hello, my name is Jenice. I’ll be your tour guide today. Welcome to Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of some of our nation’s greatest American heroes …

I worked as a tour guide during college, and that’s the beginning of an actual tour I used to narrate multiple times a day while shepherding tourists around Arlington National Cemetery.

The hop-on, hop-off bus tour included stops at the graves of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Gen. Robert E. Lee mansion.

Along the way, the bus would pause as I pointed out the grave site of the nation’s first Black Air Force general, Daniel Chappie James Jr. A former member of the Tuskegee Airmen, he had entered the military when it was still racially segregated.

After President Harry S. Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948, James went on to become the first Black four-star general in any of the military branches. Many of those on the Arlington tour were well aware of his story and would crane their necks to try and spot where he was buried.

This was back during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president. America was awash in a sea of conservatism. A dozen eggs cost less than $1. But here’s what I don’t get: If acknowledging that this storied general buried in Arlington was African American back then wasn’t a problem, then why has it now become an issue?

In recent weeks, Arlington National Cemetery officials have unpublished website links to the history of Black, Hispanic, and female service members to comply with President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order aimed at ending diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

I reached out to cemetery officials on Tuesday, who said in an email statement that no service member names have been removed from the “notable graves” section on their website.

However, they added, those whose information previously had been listed under “African American History” or “Women’s History” categories could now be found in other sections such as “Prominent Military Figures” or “Science, Technology and Engineering.”

“We are actively working to update our educational content in compliance with executive orders issued by the president and Department of Defense instruction,” cemetery officials said in a statement.

In other words, they now lump people together, ignoring the unique circumstances and considerable obstacles many had to overcome because of their race and sex.

I shudder to think about all the changes they’ve made to Arlington’s website in the name of eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Arlington National Cemetery is sacred. Many of those interred in the more than 600 acres made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Their legacies should be hands-off and protected from Trump’s virulent and racist attacks on DEI.

The fact that Arlington National Cemetery has been dragged into this administration’s anti-DEI nonsense was first reported by Task and Purpose on March 13.

According to a story on the military news website, a page on the cemetery’s website about Black soldiers in World War II previously said they “served their country and fought for racial justice.” That mention is gone now. Matt White, a senior editor at Task and Purpose, wrote that he based his reporting for his article on archival website information.

Once America is past this regressive era in politics, we will put things back together. We will rebuild what is broken. Trump recently removed a ban on “segregated facilities,” such as waiting rooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains, for federal contractors. We’ll fix that, too. We will restore what he erases and work on America’s relationships with our foreign allies.

The last time I was at Arlington National Cemetery was in 2020, when my uncle, the late Charles Armstrong, was laid to rest. Like James, he had been a young man when the military was desegregated and became one of the first Black officers. Being interred at Arlington National Cemetery was my uncle’s final wish.

His legacy, and that of so many others interred there, should be celebrated, not buried.