Arlington National Cemetery removed links to webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans

In mid-March 2025, claims (archived) circulated online that the Arlington National Cemetery website had removed links to webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans buried at the site.

The claim circulated on X as well as Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived). Snopes readers also emailed us to ask about the claim.

The claim originated from a report by Task & Purpose, a military news, culture and analysis outlet. The report found that between December 2024 and March 2025, several links to pages relating to Black, Hispanic and female veterans disappeared from Arlington National Cemetery's website.

Using archive.org's Wayback Machine, a website that archives pages from across the web, we verified the removal of links that Task & Purpose reported. The removed links included three pages from the "Notable Graves" section, six education "themes," two pages from the "History of Arlington National Cemetery" subsection and one page from the website's "Explore" tab.

However, on March 19, Arlington National Cemetery addressed the missing "Notable Graves" pages in an online statement. The cemetery said the content from the de-linked "African American History," "Hispanic American History" and "Women's History" pages was redistributed onto existing pages.

The remaining missing pages — from the site's "Education" and "History of Arlington National Cemetery" sections — appeared to be partially restored by March 26. Therefore we rate this claim mixture.

According to Task & Purpose, cemetery officials confirmed that they "unpublished" the pages in question in compliance with a Trump administration executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion and a resulting directive from U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth "targeting race and gender-related language and policies in the military."

We reached out to Arlington National Cemetery to confirm the above. We also asked the cemetery to confirm exactly which links officials removed and when. A cemetery spokesperson gave the following reply:

We are proud of our educational content and programming and working diligently to return removed content to ensure alignment with Department of Defense instruction 5400.17 and Executive Orders issued by the President.  We remain committed to sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism, while continuing to engage with our community in a manner that reflects our core values.

In a further March 14, 2025, email, the same spokesperson said, "We are hoping to begin republishing updated education modules next week."

Missing links led to pages paying tribute to Black, Hispanic and female veterans

The Task & Purpose report included a full list of links the outlet said disappeared from Arlington National Cemetery's site.

Using Wayback Machine, we replicated Task & Purpose's findings. The missing links, removed between December 2024 and March 12, 2025, were as follows:

• African American History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection.
• Hispanic American History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection.
• Women's History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection.
• African American History, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Civil War, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Environment at ANC, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Medal of Honor, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Service Branches, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Women's History, removed from the Themes drop-down of the Education section.
• Freedman's Village, removed from the History of Arlington National Cemetery subsection.
• Section 27, removed from the History of Arlington National Cemetery subsection.

As of March 26, the Education "themes" listed above still existed and could be accessed through their direct URLs, but not through links on the Arlington National Cemetery website. "Environment at ANC" redirected to a pre-existing page called "Memorial Arboretum."

The Freedman's Village page was still available through its direct URL, though the History of Arlington National Cemetery section of the website no longer linked directly to it. The page detailed the temporary settlement housing formerly enslaved people that the federal government constructed on Arlington National Cemetery grounds in 1863.

Section 27 of Arlington National Cemetery saw the cemetery's first military burial during the Civil War. More than 3,800 African American formerly enslaved people were also buried in Section 27, according to the page, which was still live but also not directly linked on the site on March 26.

Six "Themes" disappeared from the cemetery's Education portal between February and March 2025. (education.arlingtoncemetery.mil / web.archive.org)

From a page-by-page click-through of the Arlington National Cemetery website we also found a missing list of webinars under the website's "Explore" section. The Webinars subpage disappeared from the site between Feb. 22, 2025, and March 11, 2025. The page contained recordings of talks on topics including "Freedman's Village" and "75 years recruiting women" that might have qualified it for removal.

Links removed following DOD 'digital content refresh'

The U.S. Army, reporting to the Department of Defense, operates Arlington National Cemetery under the Office of Army Cemeteries. Therefore, policies enacted in the DOD also apply to the cemetery, its staff and its website.

As noted above, an Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson said content on its site was removed to "ensure alignment with Department of Defense instruction 5400.17."

Confusingly, Department of Defense Instruction 5400.17 only covers social media use within the DOD. The DOD updated the document on Feb. 14, 2025, to comply with Executive Order 14168, titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."

Instruction 5400.17 only mentioned the terms "gender," "sex" and "race" once, in a clause prohibiting "Hate speech or material that ridicules others on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, disability, national origin, or sexual orientation" on DOD social media accounts. It was unclear how exactly Instruction 5400.17 or Executive Order 14168 related to the removal of links leading to pages about Black or Hispanic veterans.

Another, more-likely source of the removal came in a memo U.S. Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell released on Feb. 27. The memo asked all DOD public platforms to carry out a "digital content refresh." The memo read (emphasis ours):

By March 5, 2025, Components must take all practicable steps, consistent with records management requirements, to remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). All articles, photos, and videos removed from DoD websites and social media platforms must be archived and retained in accordance with applicable records management policies.

The memo specifically mentioned "articles that focus on immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex" among content that must be removed as part of the digital content refresh.

Snopes previously reported on NASA scrubbing its website to remove mentions of minorities and inclusion and the U.S. military's anti-DEI purge of WWII Enola Gay aircraft photos.