Park Service orders removal of ‘woke’ quotes at Boston’s Bunker Hill monument
A visitor complaint prompted a review of quotes that are anti-war, pro-immigrant or highlight American hypocrisy on slavery ahead of the monument’s 251st anniversary celebration.
By Jake Spring, The Washington Post
June 4, 2026
The National Park Service has ordered the removal of three quotes at the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston commemorating a Revolutionary War battle because they have run afoul of President Donald Trump’s policy seeking to scrub “corrosive ideology” from federal institutions, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The site includes panels with quotes from historic figures or writings that reflect on the 200-year-old monument. A visitor at the site complained to park staff about a quote related to women’s suffrage as being “woke” feminist ideology, the people familiar said, and the visitor later sent an email complaint.
That prompted a wider review of material at the site that ultimately led the agency to order the removal of the three quotes in time for the 251st anniversary of the monument on June 17, two of the people said. The panel quotes have not yet been removed.
Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, responded to questions about the removal order by calling it “a routine exhibit refresh.”
“Through President Trump, we have encouraged Americans to visit our cultural and historic sites and engage in meaningful conversations about the moments that have shaped our country,” Martin said in a statement.
The monument commemorates the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first major battle between revolutionary forces and the British army, roughly two months after the start of the Revolutionary War. While British forces won, they suffered heavy casualties with roughly 1,000 killed or wounded, according to the National Park Service. The quotes ordered to be removed include one from a 1971 anti-war editorial by Vietnam War veterans Arthur Johnson and Bestor Cram, the people familiar said.
“We find, upon reflection, that our duty to our country has not ended … We as Vietnam Veterans, strongly feel that the United States should cease to build memorials to death and begin to glorify life,” the quote reads.
Cram told The Washington Post in an interview on Thursday that he opposed Trump’s policymaking changes across the park system, including the order to remove his quote.
“I‘m completely outraged with the administration wanting to essentially reinterpret history or erase history,” Cram said.
Trump issued an executive order last year directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that is critical of historic Americans or events. National Park Service officials have broadly interpreted that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or the persecution of Indigenous people.
Cram wrote the editorial around the time of a three-day anti-war march in 1971 that ended with the protesters camping at Bunker Hill.
“Bunker Hill represents a physical place where people took a stand, during the earliest stages of the American Revolution,” he told The Post. “That’s exactly what our quote was all about, the need to continue to enact essentially our pursuit of liberty and the freedom that we enjoy to express dissent when we see something that is compromising the ideals of what we all stand for as Americans.”
Kristen Sykes, Northeast Regional Director for the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, said the Trump administration’s policy removing information from parks amounts to censorship.
“Bunker Hill tells the story of our fight for democracy and for the rights of all people to be free,” Sykes said in a statement. “Censoring the contributions of any people that came before us would go against the very ideals that were fought for at this place.”
Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said it’s unprecedented that one visitor’s opinion would result in changes to exhibits that are carefully planned and researched by experts.
“It’s scary that we aren’t trusting the experts and academics who have put together this material and instead we are censoring history and science that is not incorrect and it’s not inaccurate,” Thompson said. “It’s just information that makes people uncomfortable and it’s politically motivated.”
NPCA, the Coalition and other groups are suing the Trump administration over the policy, with a judge dismissing the administration’s motion to dismiss earlier on Thursday.
Another quote to be removed from Bunker Hill is about the hypocrisy of Americans who “love liberty” but own enslaved people.
“As we drew near to Boston, there stood Bunker Hill Monument, towering up towards the heavens, as if in silent, bitter mockery of the millions of slaves guarded by the professed lovers of Liberty, who reared it’s lofty column,” it reads, quoting from a 1846 letter to the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper.
The third panel quote spoke in favor of foreign-born citizens.
“Now that a public orator has declared that foreign-born men have no association with the men of the Revolution, it is our duty to show that in love of freedom and loyalty to the republic, the citizens of foreign birth take no second place,” the panel quotes from a Boston newspaper from 1875.
The Park Service did not order the removal of the information on women’s suffrage that prompted the complaint.