Overview
- The U.S. Army has removed Medgar Evers, a WWII veteran and civil rights leader, from the Arlington National Cemetery website, citing President Trump's executive order to eliminate Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
- Historians and civil rights advocates criticize the move as an erasure of minority contributions to U.S. history, with Evers' military service and civil rights activism deeply intertwined.
- Evers, assassinated in 1963 by a white supremacist, was buried with full military honors at Arlington and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024.
- Other minority veterans, including Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, were also removed from the website, intensifying concerns about historical revisionism.
- Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson have publicly condemned the decision, calling for the preservation of figures like Evers in public memory.