JD Vance Says Black History Isn't Being Erased. His Administration's Record Says the Opposite.

JD Vance appeared on The View this week and denied that his administration has been erasing Black history from the country's museums and public lands. Let's look at what their record actually shows.

Jun 20, 2026

When Whoopi Goldberg asked Vice President JD Vance this Tuesday about his administration taking down “the actual history that happened in this country,” he asked her to clarify, drawing groans from the studio audience. “What exactly are you talking about?” he said. A few minutes later, Sunny Hostin told him that Black history was being erased from public spaces, and Vance shook his head and responded, “That is not right.”

Conservative outlets treated the moment as a win, with Fox News reporting that the hosts “struggled to give specific examples.” Those examples are not hard to find. They are well documented across the federal government, and several of them involve Vance directly. Americans in power have done this before. They have worked to erase Black history for more than a century, and this administration has continued that effort.

I’m fighting to document stories like this before they get dismissed or erased entirely, and I need your help!

Trump Assigned Vance to Review The Smithsonian’s Black History Exhibits

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In it, he accused the Smithsonian Institution of promoting a “divisive, race-centered ideology” and named the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically, out of the hundreds of museums and historic sites across the country. He called the museum “oppressive.”

Through this order, Trump gave Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, the authority to review the institution’s programs and remove what the administration called “improper ideology.” Yet when Goldberg and Hostin asked Vance about the removal of Black history, he claimed he did not know what they were referring to.

Kevin Young, the museum’s director since 2021, went on leave that month and resigned by the end of the year. Three other Smithsonian museums also lost their permanent directors that year. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which had drawn more than ten million visitors since opening in 2016, was left without a permanent director.

The Administration Removed Black History Across Federal Sites

In February 2025, the National Park Service changed its webpage on the Underground Railroad. Editors removed the photograph of Harriet Tubman that had appeared at the top of the page, along with her quotation about never losing a passenger. They replaced Tubman’s image with a collage of postage stamps that highlighted cooperation between Black and white abolitionists, and they cut references to enslaved people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The original page described the Underground Railroad as resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, but the new version described it as an expression of American unity. The Park Service restored the original page only after public criticism, claiming the changes had not been approved by leadership.

The administration made similar removals on other federal sites. At Fort Pulaski in Georgia, the Park Service took down “The Scourged Back,” the 1863 photograph of an enslaved man’s whip-scarred back that remains one of the clearest pieces of physical evidence of slavery’s brutality. At Harpers Ferry, officials removed information about John Brown’s raid to arm enslaved people and flagged more than thirty signs for removal because they referenced racial discrimination. At Independence National Historical Park, the administration ordered the removal of panels describing the enslaved people George Washington kept at the President’s House, but were ordered to put them back after a federal judge intervened. Officials flagged a plaque at Stones River that named slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War, and at the home of Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader who was assassinated in Mississippi in 1963, they removed the word “racist” from the description of the Klansman who murdered him.

The administration also rolled back free admission to national parks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth. The Defense Department removed pages honoring the Tuskegee Airmen and briefly removed information about Jackie Robinson’s military service. The Naval Academy pulled nearly four hundred books from its library, including Maya Angelou’s autobiography, while leaving copies of “Mein Kampf” and “The Bell Curve” on the shelves. Goldberg could have given Vance any one of these examples.

Earlier Generations Erased Black History Too

This is not the first time Americans in power have tried to erase Black history. After the Civil War, many white Southerners worked to change how the war and slavery were taught. Members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy reviewed and approved school textbooks in the early twentieth century and built monuments across the South. They taught that the Civil War was a noble defense of states’ rights and played down slavery as its cause. Generations of American children, including some who are now members of Congress and described it on the House floor this year, learned a history of the Civil War that barely mentioned slavery.

Academic historians also took part in this effort. The Dunning School, a group of credentialed historians working at Columbia in the same era, taught that Reconstruction was a disaster and that formerly enslaved people were unfit to govern themselves. These historians presented white supremacy as fact, and their academic standing made the claim look respectable for decades. The administration now describes its removals as a return to “truth and sanity,” which is another way of presenting deeply prejudiced views as objective history.

Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in 1926 because the government and most historians refused to tell the truth about the country’s past. He believed that when a government hides its history, it does so to protect the people in power. Black History Month grew out of Woodson’s week and this year is its hundredth anniversary. Woodson created it to counter the kind of erasure the federal government is currently orchestrating. This erasure is documented in news reports, court records, and the government’s own archived web pages. When Vance tells us on national television that none of it is happening, he is counting on most people not to look.

References

Kinnard, Meg. “JD Vance Went on Television to Plug a Faith Memoir. ‘The View’ Had Other Plans.” Associated Press, June 16, 2026.
Shanfeld, Ethan. “’The View’ Hosts Grill JD Vance on Epstein Files, ICE and Trump: ‘Are You His Interpreter or His Vice President?’” Variety, June 16, 2026.
Jones, Tom, and Angela Fu. “’The View’ Conducted a Respectable (and Respectful) Interview with Vice President JD Vance.” Poynter, June 17, 2026.
“Vance Rejects ‘The View’ Hosts Claiming ‘Black History Has Been Erased’ by Trump Administration.” Fox News, June 16, 2026.
Villagomez, Angelo, Mariam Rashid, and Kendra Hughes. “The Trump Administration Is Intentionally Erasing the Black History Told by Public Lands and Waters.” Center for American Progress, February 20, 2026.
Sullivan, Terrance. “Black History Month Turns 100 as Trump Tries to Erase It.” Amnesty International USA, February 10, 2026.
Walk, Trey. “The Trump Administration’s Assaults on Black History.” Human Rights Watch, April 10, 2025.
Cascone, Sarah. “Can Trump Really Control the Smithsonian? Here’s What We Know.” Artnet News, April 4, 2025.
“Head of Smithsonian’s Black Museum Resigns Amid Trump’s Attacks.” Chicago Crusader, April 11, 2025.
“After a Backlash, National Park Service Restores Old Underground Railroad Webpage That Prominently Features Harriet Tubman.” CNN, April 7, 2025.
U.S. Congress. House. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Erasing Black History. 119th Cong., 1st sess. Congressional Record 171, no. 84 (May 19, 2025): H2139–H2145.
“Donald Trump’s Policies Target Black Americans.” Office of Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, accessed June 2026.