For the last four years, high school world history teacher Hadley DiForti has taught the story of Navy hero Doris Miller to her students.
Miller, a cook on a ship, gunned down attacking Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor in 1941, before he led other sailors to safety. The effort made him the first Black sailor to receive the Navy Cross, and his image was used on recruitment posters.
But earlier this year, when DiForti went to a Navy website that she had used for years to teach the students about Miller’s story, it had been taken down, leaving her students feeling “significantly upset.”
“I was extremely angry,” the Tennessee teacher said. “I’ve taught about him now for four years in a row, and kids really do like learning about him.” She has come to rely on .gov websites because she could trust them, she said, but “now, that’s not the case.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot told NBC News earlier this week that “DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission.”
While one of the Navy’s webpages about Miller had been restored, others have not. He is one of many people from marginalized backgrounds documented in thousands of webpages and images whose military history has been scrubbed from Pentagon websites, following President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for government agencies to do away with anything that touches what may be perceived as diversity, equity and inclusion.
“We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms,” Ullyot continued. “In the rare cases that content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly.”
Some pages about figures like Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Code Talkers and Desert Storm-era Gen. Colin Powell have been restored following public outrage. But many remain down and have not been restored.
“It is both perplexing and disheartening to witness initiatives that, under the guise of DEI, obscure the very narratives that shape our collective history,” said Nika White, a long-time DEI expert and author of the book “Diversity Uncomplicated.” “Eliminating references to these figures not only undermines foundational principles of DEI but stands as a glaring contradiction to the pursuit of truth.”
The amount of truth that stands to be lost is substantial, given the countless contributions by Black people, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community who were military heroes and historical figures.
“At its core, DEI is about recognizing and valuing the diverse experiences and contributions of all individuals, particularly those historically marginalized,” White said. “To erase these contributions is to engage in a form of historical revisionism that diminishes the legacies of countless service members who have fought valiantly for our country.”
Multiple pages about Robinson, a second lieutenant in the Army who went on to break the color barrier in professional baseball, were taken down, including a page about Negro League players talking about serving in the military. But as of Wednesday afternoon, at least one page about Robinson, in a series about athletes who served in the military, had been reinstated.
Similarly, most of the webpages about Miller remain down. One Navy History and Heritage Command page about Miller has been restored, but a large red banner at the top of the site warns that content had been “revised or removed to align with the President’s executive orders and DoD priorities.” Other webpages about him on the Navy’s website remain down.
“It’s not fair and it’s really shocking that our government would do this,” DiForti said. “I want our students to be able to look at those heroes that serve this country, that looked like them, and realize that they could be like them one day, and not just the heroes that look like me.”
Henry-Louis Taylor, the director of urban studies at the University at Buffalo, said the omission of Black war heroes like Miller “reflects a broader effort to erase Black history and return to a time when U.S. history was a fantasy centered on white glory. If Trump’s goal had been a colorblind portrayal of military history, he could have simply omitted racial identifiers.”
He said it seems the objective has been to prioritize the history of white participation and heroism. “This erasure is not just an attack on Black and other people of color — it’s an attack on truth itself, turning history as a social science into history as a fairy tale.”
Donald Williamson, who served 25 years in the Army, said the changes foretell “a sad day in America.”
“This goes against everything we were taught about diversity and inclusion in our ranks,” he said.
The Army website had deleted and then reinstated this week the page for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. More than a third of the soldiers were born to Japanese immigrants, and despite dealing with racism in the U.S., the 442nd became the most decorated unit in American military history for its size. The group, which had to be replenished several times, totaled about 14,000 soldiers, of which 9,486 received Purple Hearts, 21 Medals of Honor and eight Presidential Unit Citations.
Missing last week on the Arlington National Cemetery website were pages about Hector Santa Anna, a World War II bomber pilot, as well as pages about dozens of notable Black, Latino and female veterans. Among the information missing was that for Powell, the former general who became the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the highest rank in the military after the president. His page was restored on March 16.
Medgar Evers, the civil rights icon who served in the Army during World War II, was removed from the Arlington Cemetery website as well. In 2017, Trump called Evers a “great American hero” at the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Taylor, the historian, referred to the book “Black Reconstruction in America” by scholar W.E.B. DuBois. In it, DuBois argued that white scholars had deliberately falsified American history to create a narrative that offered a “false but comforting sense of accomplishment,” Taylor said.
DuBois said in the book that such manipulation had led people to describe history as “lies agreed upon” and warned that this misinformation would have destructive consequences. Taylor said DuBois foresaw what’s happening now.
“Nothing good can come of this,” Taylor said.
