‘Disgraceful’: Trump Administration Quietly Strips WWII Memorials Honoring Black Veterans After Right-Wing ‘Cowards’ Complain, Sparking Outrage

It was bad enough that Black veterans who served in World War II returned to a country that denied them the benefits offered to white veterans, including housing and educational opportunities, resulting in a loss of generational wealth still affecting Black families today.
But now the Trump administration is attempting to erase their contributions by quietly removing two memorials from the Netherlands American Cemetery commemorating the Black soldiers who helped liberate the Netherlands from German occupation.
The decision to remove the memorials was made after a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, according to a lengthy thread on X by ChrisO_wiki, who describes himself on his bio as an “independent military history author and researcher.”
“One of the two panels described how a million African-Americans volunteered for service during World War II, but had to fight against both the enemy and racism on their own side, including segregation within the army itself that confined many to supporting roles,” ChrisO_wiki wrote.
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“One of those roles was burying the dead, a highly traumatic duty as many of the bodies were severely mutilated.”
“A second panel was dedicated to telephone engineer George H. Pruitt, who died on June 10, 1945, while trying to save a comrade who had fallen into a river.”
The complaint appears to have come from an opinion piece written by GianCarlo Canaparo, a babyfaced conservative who accused the American Monument Battles Commission of failing to follow Trump’s executive order for federal agencies to “terminate all of their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and all DEI offices and positions.”
The American Monument Battles Commission is the federal agency that operates military cemeteries, memorials, monuments, and markers around the world. The remains of more than 8,000 American soldiers are buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery, which was created in 1944, including 174 Black soldiers.
While the Black veterans have gone largely ignored in the United States, they are highly respected by the Netherlands government, which refers to them as the “Black Liberators of Margraten,” the village where the cemetery was built.
The Netherlands government even maintains a website with a list of Black soldiers buried in the cemetery.
But many of those names, including Pruitt’s name, do not come up in the American War Memorials Overseas website, which is maintained by the AMBC. It’s unclear at this point if their names have been removed or if they were ever included in the first place.
However, at least one Black soldier comes up in the American-run database: Julius W. Morris, who was awarded a Purple Heart.
“It upsets me,” Raphael Morris, the nephew of Julius W Morris, told The Guardian.
“We’ve got all sorts of museums around the country honoring African Americans. And a lot of the displays have been taken down. I guess I didn’t realize that the cemetery there in Margraten could possibly be affected by the same virus that’s affecting the United States right now, with this current administration.”
After World War II, many white veterans benefited from the GI Bill, which allowed them to build generational wealth through educational and home ownership opportunities, which enabled the white middle-class to thrive during the postwar years, while Black veterans were denied such opportunities.
A 2016 study determined it would take 228 years for the average Black family to catch up economically to the average white family, mostly a result of systemic racist policies that held Black families back, including those who served their country, which still exists today.
The AMBC issued a statement saying the panels were “designed to be rotated regularly throughout the exhibition” and claimed the Pruitt panel was “currently not on display, but not out of rotation,” according to MSNBC.
Meanwhile, 11 political parties in the Netherlands issued a statement saying the removal of the panels was “indecent” and “unacceptable.”
“We greatly value the story of the Black Liberators in relation to the past, present and future,” stated Alain Krijnen, the mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, in an email to the AMBC.
“In that context, we would greatly appreciate it if the story of the Black Liberators — like the 172 Black Liberators buried in— could be given permanent attention in the visitor center, and therefore reconsider the removal of the displays.”
But it does not appear at this time that any American politician currently in office has raised concern about the removal of the memorial panels, which were only established in 2024.
However, Robert F. Orr, a former Republican politician and retired North Carolina judge who left the party in 2021 after calling Trump “a danger to the country,” voiced his outrage on the social media platform X over the removal of the memorials.