Pentagon Removes Webpages Celebrating Racial Integration of the Armed Forces

Several webpages that celebrated the armed forces’ history of racial integration have been removed from Defense Department websites, TPM has found.

An Army webpage from 2008 that lauded the 60th anniversary of President Harry Truman’s 1948 integration order has disappeared. It was available as recently as last year, web archives show. One Air Force page devoted to “breaking barriers” is no longer accessible — and the word “DEI” appears to have been added to its URL.

A page from the Navy’s History and Heritage Command that includes a monograph about “Black Sailors and the Integration of the U.S. Navy” now has a large red banner on top that reads, “Content on this website has been revised or removed to align with the President’s executive orders and DoD priorities in accordance with DoD Instruction 5400.17 ‘Official Use of Social Media for Public Affairs Purposes.'”

After TPM sent the Pentagon a list of deactivated links that included a Marines page with the URL http://honoring-history-achievements-of-african-american-marines and an Air Force page about Colin Powell being the first African-American joint chiefs chairman now labeled as “DEI,” Press Secretary John Ullyot owned the move in a statement.

“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution,” Ullyot wrote. “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”

The Pentagon so far seems to have taken a scattershot approach to its task. In addition to having 1.3 million active duty personnel and around 800,000 in the reserve, the Department of Defense also boasts a large presence online. Some pages that were scrubbed — like the Air Force’s Colin Powell page that’s no longer accessible —  continue to be accessible elsewhere on the military’s online footprint.

It’s not a total scrub. There are still many pages that mention or celebrate racial integration that are still online; but the Pentagon appears to have removed a significant portion of them under the anti-DEI order.

One page that focuses on “African American Service and Racial Integration in the U.S. Military” was deactivated when TPM first asked about it in a Monday evening press inquiry. After the inquiry, the page appears to have been restored to the internet.

Still, many pages across the branches that celebrated the military’s history of desegregation initiatives are no longer available. The Washington Post reported on Monday that a page on a Native American Marine who was captured in a famous image raising an American flag on Iwo Jima was also caught up in the purge; Axios reported Monday that a page on the Navajo Code Talkers had been removed.

One website that celebrated the passage of the Civil Rights Act and its effect on the military is no longer accessible, TPM found. Internet archives show that it could be accessed during Trump’s first term. Another page, in which a veteran from the late 1940s recalled the process of integration, is also down.

One Army page, accessible last year via archive, honored the 75th anniversary of Truman’s integration order and its impact on the National Guard. The page is no longer available.

The article within quoted one official as saying that change “ultimately comes from people, not laws.”

“When someone says to me, ‘Hey, I would love to see more African Americans in my organization,’ my question is, Are you part of the recruiting process?” the person said. “When it comes to inspiring change, it’s on every one of us.”