Following massive backlash, the National Park Service has returned brochures it reportedly pulled from a monument honoring civil rights activist Medgar Evers on Thursday that called his assassin, a Ku Klux Klan member, a “racist.”
Park Service officials told Mississippi Today the brochures at Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument describing Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, as “racist” had been pulled and were set to be replaced with a new version, removing that description. The officials told the outlet the original brochures were “outdated.”
An official told HuffPost in an email that “the administration did not authorize these changes made by rogue employees,” which it called a “deliberate act to make the administration look bad.” The official added that the situation is being investigated.
The monument’s superintendent, Keena Graham, told the Mississippi Free Press on Thursday that some edits to the monument’s brochures are planned with the Evers’ family cooperation.
“Right now, we are actually working with the Evers family because we have two agreements with them — one is a general agreement with the Evers family and one is the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute — to consult with them on all issues that deal with interpretation and education and all that stuff,” Graham told the outlet. “They’re working with us right now to revise it and include more stuff in it. More photographs, more information and the correct hours of operation.”
Evers’ daughter Reena Evers-Everette, executive director of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute, told Mississippi Today, “the final product has not been put out yet.”
Controversy over the brochures’ removal comes amid President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI agenda on national parks, made clear in an executive order last year that revoked former President Barack Obama’s 2017 memorandum.
The president has also signed the “Restores Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, which directs the Department of the Interior to ensure all properties within its jurisdiction “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Park Service officials defended the order, telling Mississippi Today, “claims that parks are erasing history or removing signs wholesale are inaccurate.”
The officials said, “Some materials may be edited or replaced to provide broader context, others may remain unchanged, and some removals being cited publicly had nothing to do with [the order] at all.”
Evers, whom Trump once called a “hero,” was a World War II veteran who fought segregation in Mississippi upon his return and was killed by white supremacist Beckwith in 1963. The activist’s history, however, was wiped from sections of the Arlington National Cemetery website last year.
The department’s decision to pull the monument’s brochures sparked backlash amongst officials, historians and Evers’ family.
United States Civil War historian Kevin Levin told followers on social media he is “speechless.”
He wrote, “The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a ‘racist.’”
Medgar Evers’ niece, Hinds County Supervisor Wanda Evers, told Mississippi Today, “You can take away the brochures, but the one thing you can’t take away is history.”