Trump is honoring these Black icons in quest "to restore the Nation"
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President Trump at a 2025 White House reception held in honor of Black History Month. Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Trump has announced a list of Black historical figures who will be included in his National Garden of American Heroes.
The big picture: Trump's Black History Month announcement comes amid his administration's broader suppression of Black history and culture across the U.S. as well as diversity and inclusion efforts in corporations, hospitals, federal government agencies and beyond.
Driving the news: The National Garden of American Heroes, which Trump originally announced during his first term, will include multiple Black heroes, he announced in a proclamation on Tuesday.
- The park will "honor our greatest Americans, including black icons like Booker T. Washington, Jackie Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali, and many others," the action reads.
- Trump praised abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens, poet Phillis Wheatley, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and economist Thomas Sowell.
The president also recognized Prince Estabrook, who served in the Revolutionary War while enslaved, and Lemuel Haynes, who is widely recognized as the first Black man in America to be ordained by a Protestant church.
- Trump called them "black patriots" and said "as President, I am fighting to restore the Nation that these titans helped build."
What they're saying: Trump also used the occasion to slam "the progressive movement and far-left politicians," as has become a tradition in his White House commemorations.
- They "needlessly divide our citizens on the basis of race, painting a toxic and distorted and disfigured vision of our history, heritage, and heroes," he said.
Between the lines: In contrast to Trump's Black History Month gesture, his administration has rolled back bedrock civil rights measures and dealt unprecedented blows to institutions for their efforts to represent and include Black people, as well as other marginalized groups.
- "Since the start of Trump's second term, we have seen a coordinated effort to erase or rewrite parts of American history, especially Black history and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement," Martin Luther King III, son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., told Axios last month.
- "The administration's attacks on DEI programs and its moves to remove books and materials that highlight diversity, inclusion, and civil rights are a clear attempt to sanitize history and limit whose stories are told."
Catch up quick: Trump expressed support in his proclamation for Black History Month celebrations, which his administration has targeted in the past year.
- In response to his executive order last year banning DEI initiatives, the Pentagon's intelligence agency paused special event programs and related events, including ones for Black History Month.
Yes, but: In the recent proclamation, the president said,"I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities."
Go deeper: Black philanthropy races to save history as Trump cuts support
