On a now-defunct National Park Service (NPS) website page, prominent references to Pauli Murray’s relationship with gender and sexuality carry the same significant weight that identity seemed to have in the Durham scholar and activist’s life.
Throughout the 1930s, the second paragraph on the page—now only accessible through Wayback Machine—reads, Murray’s “struggles with gender became central to her life.”
“She changed her name to “Pauli” to represent a more androgynous identity,” the page reads. “Historian Rosalind Rosenberg, author of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray, asserts that Murray identified as a transgender man but did not have the information or acceptance available during her lifetime to describe it.”
Jesse Huddleston, board chair at Durham’s Pauli Murray Center, said they first noticed the website page deletion yesterday. The edits are part of a federal sweep of NPS content related to LGBTQ+ history; an NPS page for Pauli Murray’s home appears untouched so far.
The Pauli Murray Center, a National Historic Landmark site, opened in September 2024 after years of restoration efforts. Leadership at the center was swift to respond to the deletion, writing in a press release this morning that the website changes censure history and compromise “the work of transgender and queer activists who stand in Murray’s wake today.”
“This is our shared history,” Huddleston told the INDY. “You’re not just erasing LGBTQ history, which is obviously the intention here, but you’re no longer telling relevant truth.”
Murray is widely celebrated for their dynamism—poet, priest, legal scholar, prolific person of letters. It is through those papers that Murray’s identity struggles are documented. At the age of 15, Murray (born Anna Pauline Murray) adopted the more gender-neutral name Pauli, writing in a journal that they believed they were “one of nature’s experiments; a girl who should have been a boy,” later unsuccessfully seeking out testosterone treatment.
“We see Pauli as a particular inspiration that can give us perspective and framework for addressing enduring inequities and injustices today,” Huddleston said. “So, the work continues.”
Pauli Murray’s is not the first NPS page to be stripped: Three weeks ago, an NPS website detailing the Stonewall Uprising was overhauled; the word “queer” removed alongside the “T” and “Q+” in “LGBTQ,” leaving the acronym to simply read “LGB.”
Since then, numerous NPS pages have been censored, ranging from accounts of prominent historical events like Stonewall to that of more obscure queer figures, like an 18th-century Quaker preacher who renounced pronouns. The latter page is currently unavailable and reads “page in progress.”
In a March 5 report about the changes, NPR writes that NPS responded to a request for comment by stating that the changes are implementations of “Executive Order 14168 and Secretary’s Order 2416: Federal Register: Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government [and] SO 3416 – Ending DEI Programs and Gender Ideology Extremism.”
The website purges echo similar changes at other federal agencies: In early February, the Center for Disease Control (C.D.C.) deleted thousands of website entries related to transgender people and gender identity, a move that stripped the website of research and resources and sowed confusion. Shortly thereafter, a temporary restraining order from a federal judge ordered the agency to restore website pages.
As of March 4, more than 750 NPS employees have been fired, per a crowdsourced spreadsheet put together by park workers; at least 23 North Carolina park rangers are among those fired—all part of President Trump’s mass cuts to the federal workforce.
The NPS did not respond to a request for comment about the Pauli Murray website at the time of publication.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an independent nonprofit established in 1919 as a NPS watchdog, issued a statement condemning the changes.
“As mandated by law, dedicated National Park Service staff have poured more than one hundred years of work into preserving, protecting, and interpreting the stories that built our nation,” Alan Spears, the NPCA senior director for cultural resources, wrote in the release.
“By removing these educational and historical materials from public access,” Spears continues, “the administration is making it harder for National Park Service staff to fulfill their obligation to tell the stories of all Americans and maintain an accurate account of history.”
The Pauli Murray Center is urging anyone concerned about the move to call their congressperson and continue to visit and support the center. An upcoming benefit on March 15 provides one such opportunity, with abundant whimsy: The event, an inaugural “Pauli Murray Dog Walk” invites participants to raise money for the center in a one-mile neighborhood pack walk, a nod to the social justice icon’s love of dogs.
It is, Huddleston says, “a perfect spring opportunity” to activate engagement with “our work at the center and with the life and legacy of our beloved ancestor.”
“We want to be welcoming,” Huddleston said. “We want to be accessible, we want to be friendly and neighborly.”
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