National Park Service scrubs Boston LGBTQ+ history in quiet purge of website - The Boston Globe (2025)

“As much as I think people shouldn’t find credence to their existence from the state, I do think the state admitting that you exist is a good thing,” said Michael Bronski, a professor at Harvard University and author of “A Queer History of the United States.“

In an email, the NPS would not confirm it made the website changes, saying only that it had implemented the Trump administration’s orders.

The Globe’s review of the agency’s Boston web pages found at least six instances where the NPS removed articles on LGBTQ+ activism at Faneuil Hall, wiped guides on Black and LGBTQ+ history from the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters web page, and shortened all mentions and tags of “LGBTQ+” to “LGB.”

The tweaks, which occurred in February as noted on the website’s timestamps, are part of broader changes the NPS has made to the historical record in recent months. As NPS removed transgender and queer histories from its Boston sites, the federal agency erased any mentions of transgender people from its Stonewall National Monument page. Earlier this month, it also removed mentions of Harriet Tubman on its Underground Railroad page; the references were restored after widespread complaints.

Many historians responded to the changes with growing concern, especially as federal cuts to humanities grants continue and LGBTQ+ people are finding fewer avenues for gender-affirming care, resources, and wraparound support. Without vetted facts available, queer activists worry, it will be harder for the community to organize, speak up, and show up.

“The one way we can fight back is by making sure folks know where the accurate information is, but if they are taking all that away, there’s no way to fight it,” said Jean Dolin, founder, president, and CEO of the Boston LGBTQ+ Museum of Art, History, and Culture.

Activists worry the erasures leave a large gap of knowledge historians labored to uncover. The “Their Dreams, Their Rights, and Their Love” LGBTQ+ history walking tour included the roles of influential queer figures such as 19th-century novelists Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields as well as gay rights activist Prescott Townsend. It also incorporated classic gathering spots, such as the Sporters Bar in the West End.

The Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters was the home of celebrated poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for several decades, and General George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War. Now-deleted pages on the historic site’s web page captured the queer romantic relationships involving members of the Longfellow family.

“As America’s storytellers, the National Park Service is committed to telling the history of all Americans in all of its diversity and complexity,” read a block quote on the historic site’s now-missing LGBTQ+ history page. “For many years, the rich histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans have been erased through punishing laws and general prejudice—appearing sporadically in police proceedings, medical reports, military hearings, and immigration records.“

The NPS has altered some local pages on Black history, too. A previous version of the Longfellow House-Washington’s headquarters website detailed experiences of free and enslaved people throughout the site’s existence. (Some info on that page has been spread across other parts of the site.)

An article on the Gay and Lesbian Town Hall meetings captured the annual event’s role as a mass convener and catalyst for political activism among LGBTQ+ folks nationwide. Theo Linger, a former NPS Boston employee, contributed the article along with years of original historical research that helped lay the groundwork for the team’s LGBTQ+ history programming.

For Linger, the work felt significant.

“The National Park Service has always had this reputability,” Linger said. “To have queer history included in that sort of prestige was a very big deal.”

But in February, as the NPS responded to President Trump’s executive order, Linger received a call. The Boston NPS employee on the line gave them a choice: eliminate any mentions of trans and queer people from the article, or remove it.

Linger chose the latter.

“I didn’t want to jettison my community, or any community,” Linger said.

Local organizations are trying to fill the gaps the Boston NPS has left behind. The History Project, a local LGBTQ+ history archive, is working to republish the redacted pages onto its digital archives by June. The audio tour is already online.

“Work created by government workers belongs to the American public,” said Joan Ilacqua, executive director of The History Project. “We’re going to make it available to the community because it should be.”

Ilacqua said the federal government’s move to strip public history of transgender and queer perspectives shows that creating space for independent repositories is ever more crucial. Trump’s executive orders, Ilacqua said, add uncertainty to a community that has always preserved history with limited resources and hands on deck.

“We’re already coming from this scarcity mindset,” Ilacqua said. “That urgency has always been there.”

Sebastian Belfanti, executive director of The West End Museum, isn’t directly tied to the NPS Boston changes. But he knows the precedent its actions might set for his work, which focuses on the many immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ who once called the neighborhood home.

The Trump administration canceled a $25,000 grant for a project focusing on LGBTQ+ history in the West End, in collaboration with The History Project. Without the White House recognizing trans and queer people, he said, it will be even harder to piece together history of Boston’s LGBTQ+ community, which often only shows up in a line or a hint in surviving records. If at all.

“It just takes a lot to know if you can even find anything,” Belfanti said.

Tiana Woodard can be reached at tiana.woodard@globe.com. Follow her @tianarochon.