I fully support the move to purge woke gibberish from Department of Defense websites, but deleting historical sites is not the way to go about it. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened to the Richmond Armory, believed to be the oldest armory for Black militia in the United States.

A photo gallery of the armory in downtown Richmond and an article detailing its role in Virginia National Guard history have been taken down after the U.S. Defense Department directed the removal of content promoting DEI in the military by March 5, reports VPM News.

This is absurd. As museum director Shakia Gullette Warren noted the information about the Armory was part of the historical record. Segregation is part of Virginia history. It’s not something we should dwell on obsessively, but it is something that must be acknowledged and should be remembered as a past to which we wish never to return.

Unless the materials were drenched in the divisive rhetoric of critical theory, I can see no justification for removing them from public view. Conservative foes of DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) engaging in this kind of overreach, are guilty of the same offense — imposing their ideological world view in the public domain — they accuse the left of. And they will suffer a public backlash from it.

What we don’t know who is who made the decision, or why. Was some anti-DEI zealot behind the information purge, or did some National Guard bureaucrat order the deletions in excessive abundance of caution in complying with the Trump administration guidelines? Whatever the case, the material needs to be restored and the history of Black militias in Virginia properly remembered. — JAB