WEBVTT - Flagged for Removal 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:10.280 Cool Zone media. It's hot in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.560 month of June. That's why all the windows were open. 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.720 That night, most of the family was gathered around the television. 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:23.200 The youngest child lost his battle against sleep hours ago, 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:25.319 but the older two had settled in to watch a 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:29.280 movie after the President's addressed to the Nation ended. Their 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.040 mother said they could stay up until their father got home. 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:37.800 They heard it happen. They knew what they'd heard through 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:42.000 the open windows, the unmistakable sound of their father's car 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.440 pulling into the driveway, and then two loud, sharp sounds, 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:53.640 the car door slamming shut and a gunshot. Rena and Darryl, 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.080 both just nine years old, grabbed their baby brother and 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:01.480 stayed low below the windows, just like their father taught them. 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.440 He'd trained them well. They knew what to do in 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.480 an emergency. He'd taught them to drop low to the 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.000 floor army, crawl into the bathroom and hide in the 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:15.400 big cast iron bathtub. If they ever heard gunshots or explosions, 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:21.640 they'd be safe in there. And they'd drilled that until 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.440 they got it right, practicing how to crawl through the 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.560 house with their baby brother in tow, making sure they 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.000 could get the toddler safely into the tub in case 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:35.679 the worst happened. He'd made a game of it, tried 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:37.759 to make it fun, tried to make it a little 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:43.840 less terrifying. But the house had been firebombed before that 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:48.480 night in June. They executed the drill flawlessly. They put 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.600 their baby brother in the bathtub, but when they heard 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:56.440 their mother's screams, the two older children ran to her side. 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.720 She was standing in the driveway in a growing pool 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:06.680 of her husband's blood. Medgar Evers was murdered by a 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:11.519 white supremacist on June twelfth, nineteen sixty three. In twenty twenty, 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.280 the Medgar and Merley Evers Home in Jackson, Mississippi was 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.040 acquired by the National Park Service and designated as a 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:22.600 National monument. Visitors could stand on the spot where a 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.560 klansman killed the civil rights activist in his own driveway, 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.440 and in twenty twenty five, the President signed an executive 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:34.840 order aimed to force park rangers to stop calling the 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:43.960 murderer a racist. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, 0:02:43.960 --> 0:03:05.120 little guys Byron Dela beck With was a racist. I mean, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.399 let's just get that out of the way right here 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.320 at the top, Byron Dila beck With shot and killed 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.679 Medgar Evers, and Byron de la beck With wouldn't even 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.120 argue with you about whether he was a racist. He 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.680 was proud of it. That fact is just not something 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.280 any reasonable person thinks is of for debate. When he 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.880 was arrested in nineteen sixty three, the local newspaper in Greenwood, 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:37.200 Mississippi ran a front page story with the headline he 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:42.040 is friendly but outspoken. Underneath the picture of Dila bequ With, 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:49.240 it wasn't his mugshot. And even that newspaper described him 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:54.360 as a die hard segregationist end quote, a man who 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:59.040 hated negroes. So if you want to quibble about whether 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.880 the man was a raisedst you're falling behind the editor 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:07.760 of the Greenwood Commonwealth in nineteen sixty three. But we'll 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.320 get to Byron. We've got plenty of time. He's been 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:15.600 dead for twenty five years. He's not going anywhere. But 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.960 I was thinking about him this week. It's just an 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.320 incredibly strange coincidence that I happened to be thinking about 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.159 Byron de Leabeque on June twelfth, because he did murder 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.839 Medgar Evers on that date in nineteen sixty three. But 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:32.200 I happened to be thinking about him that day, not 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.440 because I knew the anniversary, but because that's the day. 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.520 A federal judge in Massachusetts granted an injunction ordering the 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.599 Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:50.120 stop implementing one of the president's deranged executive orders. Judge 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.760 Angel Kelly's order also requires the federal government to restore 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:59.280 and reinstall all interpretive materials so signs, brochures, posters, et 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.520 cetera that were removed, altered, or damaged over the last 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.080 year as part of the department's compliance with Executive Order 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:12.400 one four to two five three. Executive Order one four 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:17.039 two five three, with the very normal title Restoring Truth 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:21.000 and Sanity to American History, was signed in March of 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:25.320 twenty twenty five. It's okay if you don't remember that one. 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.840 He was churning those bad boys out at a pretty 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.320 spectacular pace in the first few months of his second term. 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:33.800 I mean, he spent half the afternoon the day he 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.760 took office signing executive orders. There were twenty six of 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:41.640 them on day one. He issued one hundred and forty 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.760 three executive orders in just the first one hundred days 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.839 last year, and a total of two hundred and twenty 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.080 five in the year twenty twenty five, and another fifty 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:56.040 or so so far this year. I mean, the man 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:02.200 loves to sign things. They really run the gamut. I 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:06.600 mean we're talking about everything from trying to end birthright citizenship, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.520 restricting all refugee programs to the point that they only 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:14.080 admit white South Africans, pulling out of the World Health 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.240 Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, spinning up the short 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:22.080 lived but disastrous Department of Government Efficiency, and designating Mexican 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:27.320 drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And sometimes it's just 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.200 like stuff he was thinking about and I guess he 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:34.560 wanted someone to take his picture while he thought about it. 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:40.520 I mean, just really petty stuff. There were several separate 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.800 executive orders just targeting specific law firms he was upset 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:50.280 with for personal reasons. There have been five different executive 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.960 orders related to the availability of the TikTok app on 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:58.560 your smartphone. In January of this year, he signed something 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:04.120 called Celebrate Eating American Greatness with American motor Racing, and 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.560 it directed the Department of the Interior to find a 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:10.360 suitable route through DC for a street race for his 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:14.120 big Fourth of July party. You just never know what 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.760 you're going to get. The day before he signed the 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.360 executive order that started up the whole Doge mess, he 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:25.440 signed one to make federal agencies stop buying paper straws. 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:29.840 We're going back to plastics, so as these things don't work. 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.880 I've had them many times, and on occasion they break, 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:38.280 they explode if something's hot. They don't last very long, 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.560 like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:46.800 It's a ridiculous situation. So we're going back to plastic straws. 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.880 I think it's okay, And I don't think that plastics 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.960 are going to affect a shark very much as they're eating, 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:58.160 as they're munching their way through the ocean. Okay, thank you, sir. 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.960 Next, we have a full and unconditional pardon for former 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:08.560 Governor Rob Lakoyevitch of the state of Illinois. You get 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.480 the idea. But at the end of March of twenty 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.960 twenty five, he signed his one hundred and seventh executive 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.680 order that year, ordering the Department of the Interior to 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:29.040 root out the corrosive ideology of history. I guess the 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:33.720 Order begins. Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:38.640 concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation's history, replacing 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.560 objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.960 than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.559 achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:55.440 and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.240 our nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:05.120 human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:10.079 otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity in a deeper 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:14.160 understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:19.280 history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:23.240 shame disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:28.600 that continue to inspire millions around the globe. The Order 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:34.600 aims to root out divisive language, stuff that quote portrays 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:40.440 American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. You know, 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:46.000 stuff like the historical fact of chattel slavery or the 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:51.040 genocide of indigenous peoples, or the concept of racism in general. 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.680 It was in large part aimed specifically at undoing any 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.920 changes made to public monuments, memorial statues, and markers during 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:04.960 the Biden administration, a time that did see some pretty 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:09.920 targeted changes when it came to public memory, but it 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:14.079 also tasked the Secretary of Interior with ensuring that all 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.400 public monuments, memorial statues, markers, or similar properties within the 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:23.480 Department of Interior's jurisdiction do not contain the descriptions, depictions, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:29.560 or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:34.680 including persons living in colonial times, and instead focus on 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:38.920 the greatness of the achievements in progress of the American people, or, 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.400 with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance and grandeur 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:50.559 of the American landscape. At the end of May twenty 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.480 twenty five, two months after the executive order was signed, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.640 Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgham, signed an order directing 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:02.319 Department employees to begin implementing the ex executive order. According 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.680 to Bergham's order, all bureaus within the Department of the Interior, 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.160 so that includes the National Park Service, had ninety days 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:14.000 to review all public facing properties in their jurisdiction for 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:20.240 inappropriate material, and within another thirty days after that, they 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.160 were to remove any content that didn't adequately focus on 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:29.120 America's greatness. And again, this language that I've read to 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.880 you is really all the direction they were given. It's 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.400 very vague. There wasn't some sort of complex rubric for 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:44.800 determining what is disparaging to past Americans. So, given these 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.960 vague directions, between June and September of twenty twenty five, 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:55.760 National Park Service employees conducted this required review. Every National 0:11:55.760 --> 0:12:00.440 Park Service site in the country submitted something to the 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:04.480 best of their ability, and in March of this year, 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:10.559 an anonymous group of concerned civil servants leaked that entire database, 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.840 thousands of files submitted by National Park Service employees across 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.720 hundreds of locations all over the country. All of it 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:26.120 was posted online, and it's an interesting picture. A lot 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.040 of people who work for the National Park Service are 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.520 incredibly passionate about what they do. They do it because 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:35.559 they love it. They're committed to the sites where they work, 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:42.479 they're committed to telling these stories, but not all of them. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.120 And at the end of the day, a job is 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.559 a job, and even the most passionate civil servant has 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.200 to pay the rent, and they just didn't want to 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:57.640 get fired. The submissions are anonymous, at least in the 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.080 leaked database, so you don't really know anything about the 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.200 people who filled out some form at work one day, 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:07.520 but you can kind of get a sense of the 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.400 various states of mind that these people might have been 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.559 in when they wrote these submissions. They had to obey 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.600 the order they had to submit a report of any 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:22.120 part content that could be interpreted as disparaging American greatness 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:26.200 or whatever. But some of the submissions are really bare 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.839 minimum somebody checking a box that they did it. They 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:32.480 did enough to not get fired, but they're clearly not 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:37.160 excited about participating in this ideological project. You know, they'll 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.520 take a picture of the sign and say this should 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:46.760 be reviewed, but there's no commentary. Other submissions are clearly 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:53.319 pleased for permission to keep educating the public, and some 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.880 of them, more than I would have liked, show someone 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:01.559 who is a little too eager to comply, really going 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.800 above and beyond to suggest ways that they can erase 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:09.640 any uncomfortable history and comply with this order to effectively 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:15.400 produce propaganda Park. Employees at the Selma to Montgomery National 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:20.200 Historic Trail wrote of their exhibits, quote, while these statements 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:24.560 are historically accurate and supported by first hand accounts, this 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.880 information may be perceived as disparaging by individuals who are 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.600 less familiar with the history of the civil rights movement. 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:37.440 Now that top level statement does come across as some 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:41.600 form of resistance in the way that these bureaucratic sort 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:47.640 of things can be. But the submitted documentation meticulously highlights 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.840 material that should be removed under the order. On the 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.640 wall panel about the murder of Viola Luzo, the submission 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.480 highlights the phrase a car full of white clansmen from 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:03.000 Birmingham targeted the pair and pursued them at high speed. 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:07.720 They eventually overtook the oldsmobile and fired two shots at 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:14.040 missus Leuzo's head. She died instantly. That is the sentence 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:18.520 about her murder that is flagged for removal, the sentence 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:24.200 where she's actually murdered. I guess it's disparaging to the 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:29.200 clansmen to say they shot this woman in the head. 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.720 In the pamphlet about the March to Montgomery, they flagged 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:38.680 for removal every mention of the murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson, 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.680 a young black man killed by a state trooper. But 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:46.080 Jackson's murder was the catalyst that inspired the march from 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:51.360 Selma to Montgomery in the first place. You can't have 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:55.160 an exhibit about the March from Selma to Montgomery without 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.800 talking about the young black man who was peacefully marching 0:15:57.800 --> 0:15:59.800 for the right to vote when he was beaten by 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.200 a mob and then shot and killed by a police 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:06.680 officer who later was convicted for that killing. He was 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:09.040 trying to stop a state trooper from beating his eighty 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.200 two year old grandfather to death with a club when 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:17.320 they shot him. The same pamphlet flags for removal every 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.880 mention of James Reebe, the Unitarian minister who was in 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.480 town for the march when he was beaten to death 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.600 by a white mob. It also flags for removal every 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:31.040 mention of Jonathan Daniels, the seminarian who was shot and 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.160 killed in Alabama later that same summer when he took 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.840 a shotgun blast to save the life of Ruby Sales, 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:42.120 an organizer with the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. If 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:45.360 you can't talk about who was bleeding on bloody Sunday, 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.880 if you can't talk about why the march happened in 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:51.960 the first place, If you can't mention the clan, if 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.120 you can't talk about police violence or the people who 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:58.120 were martyred fighting for civil rights in Alabama in nineteen 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.960 sixty five, just scrap the whole brochure at that point, 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:04.840 because what does it even say if you cut that out? 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.280 What is the story you're trying to tell? If you 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.679 have to scrub it so clean, all the words are gone. 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.639 At the Emmett Till and Many Mobley Till National Monument 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:22.880 in Mississippi, staff flagged the entire display as a possible 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:27.320 violation of the order, but in their submission they warned 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.040 that without content that could be deemed a violation of 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:35.080 the order, the site quote would be almost completely devoid 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:40.000 of interpretation. How can you tell the story of Emmett 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:46.560 Till if you aren't allowed to disparage any American? If 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:48.800 you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.639 at all. It's a fine adage if you're giving advice 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:56.320 to an incorrigible gossip, but it's terrible direction for writing 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:02.240 an educational display about lynching. To comply with this executive order, 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:07.200 the exhibit would have to be completely blank. You wouldn't 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:08.840 be able to talk about him at till at all. 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.200 Alan Spears, Senior director for Cultural Resources at the National 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:31.119 Parks Conservation Association, said of the effort to sanitize the 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.600 history of the civil rights movement, quote, you can talk 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.280 about Martin Luther King Junior overcoming, you just can't talk 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.800 about what he overcame, So you end up telling a 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:48.280 story that makes no sense. At the Harper's Ferry National 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:54.320 Historic Park employees flagged facts that might be offensive on 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.960 a pamphlet for a Civil War battlefield tour. The submitted 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:02.720 copy highlights areas of concern a text box containing quotes 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.359 from historical figures and documents about the cause of the 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:12.000 Civil War. The text in the highlighted portion says, our 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:17.240 position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, and 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:21.160 that is a direct quote from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession. 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.159 Another highlighted quote from Alexander Stevens, the vice president of 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:30.680 the Confederate States of America, reads slavery was the immediate 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:36.000 cause of the late Rupture and present Revolution. The Parks 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.760 employee who flagged the brochure wrote that the quotes are 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:45.399 historically accurate, but quote is this considered cherry picking and 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.480 denigrating Southerners. If it needs to be changed, we can 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:54.960 just remove this textbox. In another brochure at Harper's Ferry, 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.439 the unnamed employees concerned that language about the murder of 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.480 one of John Brown's men might and denigrate the townspeople. 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:06.200 The language in question is about how the mob of 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:09.159 people who killed William Thompson threw his body in a 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:14.560 river and then used his corpse or target practice. Again, 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.720 that's just a thing that happened. I don't know that 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:23.720 you're denigrating the murderous mob by saying what they did. 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.480 I do wish I knew who authored this particular submission, 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.920 because I need to know what goes on in the 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:37.320 mind of the parks employee who again works at the 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:41.960 Harper's Ferry National Historic Park. What is going on in 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:45.520 this person's mind when they wrote this about a handout 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:50.240 with a timeline of the life of John Brown. Quote 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:55.840 this document states a mob murdered an abolitionist. Does this 0:20:56.000 --> 0:21:02.120 denigrate the murderers? We can reword to. Abolitionist editor Elijah 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:11.280 Lovejoy was murdered for his views does this denigrate the murderers? 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:18.440 What a phenomenal question. The same employee flagged language on 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.800 a handout with a timeline of general facts about the 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:27.640 Civil War. From the submission April fifteenth, eighteen sixty one, 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.280 President Lincoln calls for seventy five thousand volunteers to put 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:35.879 down the rebellion, and then as commentary, the employee has added, 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:43.119 is rebellion considered acceptable? Could be changed to calls for 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:50.280 volunteers to respond? Is rebellion considered acceptable? We are talking 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:55.720 about the Civil War. President Lincoln wasn't just asking for volunteers. 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.399 This is an explicit reference to Proclamation eighty, which was 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.439 President Lincoln's invocation of the Militia Act after the Battle 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.359 of Fort Sumter, when the militia of a state in 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:13.240 rebellion attacked the United States military at the time. The 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:17.280 Militia Act allowed the president to call up volunteers to 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.480 put down insurrection. Even if this is your first day 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.679 on earth and you don't already know what happened after that, 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:28.400 you can keep reading that very same handout to find 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:33.080 out there was a Civil war. You can call it 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:38.000 a rebellion. It was the Civil War at Grand Teton 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.760 National Park staff offered to put a sticker over the 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:45.320 portion of the exhibit about the Mariahs Massacre, the murder 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.520 of nearly two hundred Pagan Blackfeet people in eighteen seventy. 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.040 It was a sneak attack on a camp of mostly 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.920 women and children, many of whom were sick with smallpox. 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:00.960 There were almost no able bodied men at the camp, 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:07.600 and the United States Army shot sick sleeping children and 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:13.440 then burned their bodies. The exhibit itself was already pretty 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:17.760 generous to the guys who committed the massacre. The heading 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:21.240 on the panel reads how do we acknowledge the good 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:25.280 and bad of a historic figure? And it starts by 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:31.399 listing the positive accomplishments of Gustavus Cheney Doane. Of the 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:35.800 hundreds of signs that park staff suggested for removal, this 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:39.159 is one of a relatively small number that is confirmed 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:44.320 to have been entirely removed. The offending text appears to 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:49.000 have been a rather recent edition. In twenty twenty two, 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:53.240 Mount Don, a mountain peak inside Yellowstone National Park, was 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:57.480 officially renamed First People's Mountain, and that appears to have 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:01.080 been the catalyst for the recontextualizing of Doane's legacy in 0:24:01.119 --> 0:24:05.960 these exhibits at Grand Teton. The removed text read in part. 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:11.440 In January eighteen seventy, Doane participated in what is now 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:14.640 known as the Marias Massacre, at which the US Army 0:24:14.720 --> 0:24:19.720 killed over one hundred and seventy Pagon Blackfeet, including many women, elders, 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:25.120 and children. Doane wrote fondly about this attack and bragged 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:30.320 about it for the rest of his life. I don't 0:24:30.359 --> 0:24:32.439 understand how you could say that that is a text 0:24:32.520 --> 0:24:36.199 that denigrates an American when all it says is a 0:24:36.320 --> 0:24:39.600 historical fact that this man was proud of until the 0:24:39.680 --> 0:24:48.600 day he died. It's not just racism, genocide, and slavery 0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:52.400 that are off limits. At the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:58.240 employees flagged language about light pollution, shoreline erosion, sea level rise, 0:24:58.280 --> 0:25:02.080 and climate change as possible violations of the directive, as 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:05.960 they might quote reduce the focus on the grandeur, beauty, 0:25:06.000 --> 0:25:11.639 and abundance. At Biscayne National Park in Florida, the submission 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.919 flags in educational display, but the dangers of littering and 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:17.400 how trash ends up in the ocean and then washes 0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:22.960 up on the shore, because that too quote emphasizes matters 0:25:23.080 --> 0:25:29.400 unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur. At Glacier National Park, 0:25:29.440 --> 0:25:33.360 an employee reported that the contracted party that provides concessions 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:36.639 at one of their sites had decors that includes the 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:41.800 phrase climate change affects National Parks and the treasures they protect. 0:25:43.840 --> 0:25:48.439 This was flagged as a possible violation. At the Theodore 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:51.880 Roosevelt National Park, an employee suggested removing a page about 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:55.240 light and noise pollution from an activity book for children 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:59.399 and flagged language about habitat loss due to agriculture and 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:05.040 development at the Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana. 0:26:05.160 --> 0:26:09.440 The submission offers to remove the sentence The National Park 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:12.960 Service is committed to preserving and sharing an inclusive story 0:26:13.000 --> 0:26:16.760 of America from all materials made available to the public, 0:26:19.359 --> 0:26:22.400 and that kind of sums it up, doesn't it. The 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:27.760 order prohibits preserving and sharing an inclusive story of America. 0:26:28.800 --> 0:26:33.720 The goal is not to share history, but to make 0:26:33.800 --> 0:26:39.400 up a new, better, cleaner, brighter, wider story of America. 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:43.000 To enshrine as fact things like the version of the 0:26:43.000 --> 0:26:45.480 first Thanksgiving you learned from a coloring book page in 0:26:45.520 --> 0:26:50.080 the third grade. Everyone was happy to be colonized. No 0:26:50.119 --> 0:26:54.040 one was sad about slavery. There's never been a genocide, 0:26:54.080 --> 0:26:56.639 and America will still be the most beautiful country on earth, 0:26:56.680 --> 0:27:00.400 even after we've strip mined and fracked every square inch 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:07.840 of the natural landscape. But what actually got removed? This 0:27:07.920 --> 0:27:11.920 leaked database contains the responses submitted by every National Park 0:27:11.960 --> 0:27:16.120 Service site. Remember Trump signed the executive order in March 0:27:16.160 --> 0:27:19.080 of twenty twenty five, and in that order he directed 0:27:19.119 --> 0:27:22.359 Interior Secretary Doug Burgham to make a plan to do this. 0:27:23.240 --> 0:27:26.679 So Bergham in turn wrote an order in May directing 0:27:26.680 --> 0:27:28.720 everyone in the Department of the Interior to make a 0:27:28.720 --> 0:27:33.159 plan within their own bureaus to compile possible violations and 0:27:33.280 --> 0:27:38.119 start making a plan to remove them. And this database 0:27:38.160 --> 0:27:40.159 seems to be about as far as they got. This 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:45.639 is just the list of possible violations. Implementation and follow 0:27:45.720 --> 0:27:52.439 through is thankfully not really anyone's strong suit. It is 0:27:52.520 --> 0:27:57.240 surprisingly difficult to say with any certainty what got changed 0:27:57.400 --> 0:28:01.240 or removed as a result of this order. A project 0:28:01.320 --> 0:28:04.359 called Save Our Signs sprang up in an attempt to 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:07.880 build an archive of all existing National Park signs plaques, 0:28:07.920 --> 0:28:11.560 exhibits and materials, both as an actual archive of that 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:15.480 material that could potentially be lost and as a means 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:18.000 to track any changes that came as a result of 0:28:18.040 --> 0:28:22.880 this order. The site is a collaborative effort run by librarians, 0:28:22.920 --> 0:28:26.840 public historians, and data scientists, and they collect submissions of 0:28:26.880 --> 0:28:31.680 photos of National Park materials. According to data compiled by 0:28:31.720 --> 0:28:36.600 Save our Signs, there is some degree of confirmation for 0:28:36.640 --> 0:28:40.400 at least fifty nine instances of censorship or removal of 0:28:40.440 --> 0:28:44.760 park materials, and some of those removals have already been restored, 0:28:46.280 --> 0:28:49.080 and that's a far cry from the thousands of submissions 0:28:49.120 --> 0:28:53.320 in the leaked database flagging items for review and possible removal. 0:28:55.120 --> 0:28:58.920 The majority of the confirmed alterations were from Independence National 0:28:58.960 --> 0:29:02.480 Historical Park in Phillipeadelphia, and all of those materials have 0:29:02.520 --> 0:29:05.000 already been ordered to be restored to their original condition 0:29:05.600 --> 0:29:08.840 after the City of Philadelphia sued Doug Burgham earlier this year. 0:29:10.520 --> 0:29:16.240 But again, this is just one source of largely crowdsourced data. 0:29:16.360 --> 0:29:20.239 There could be countless other instances of material that has 0:29:20.280 --> 0:29:38.959 been altered. We just don't know. And as slow as 0:29:39.000 --> 0:29:42.760 the rollout of these changes has been, a federal judge 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:46.880 has said it has to stop. After Philadelphia filed their 0:29:46.960 --> 0:29:49.400 lawsuit to stop the removal of exhibits from the National 0:29:49.480 --> 0:29:53.800 Historical Park. The National Parks Conservation Association filed a separate 0:29:53.880 --> 0:29:58.160