Suppose it isn’t obvious by now that the current Trump administration is where non-whitewashed Black history goes to die.

Source: Visions of America/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty I / Getty

In that case, the National Park Service has withdrawn a Black community in Louisiana from historic landmark consideration. It appears that opponents and advocates for the move are both attributing the decision to the cultural upheaval that has been happening in just the first month of President Donald Trump’s second term. (“Cultural upheaval” is just my far too polite way of saying they’re making white supremacy great again, of course.)

According to the Associated Press, “The agency withdrew the 11-mile (18-kilometer) stretch of land known as Great River Road from consideration for National Historic Landmark designation at the request of state officials, who celebrated the move as a win for economic development.”

“I’m grateful that the Trump Administration understands that states and localities are better at determining their interests relating to clean air, water and developing industry than leaving crucial decisions like those to Washington,” said Aurelia S. Giacometto, head of Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality, which requested the reversal on the decision cement the Great River Road in American history.

There are others who agree with Giacometto that Trump is who Louisianans have to thank for the decision, but their “thank you” dosn’t quite carry the same energy.

From AP:

Ashley Rogers, executive director of the nearby Whitney Plantation, said the decision to remove the Great River Road region from consideration for federally granted recognition was due to the “changing priorities” of the Trump administration, the latest blow to “a culture under attack.”

“It’s 100% because of the politics of the current administration, it’s not because we’ve suddenly decided that this place doesn’t matter,” Rogers said.

For the most part, it appears that officials who agree with the NPS decision believe “industrial expansion” and developement in the area Great River Road resides in is more important than preserving the history.

“If you really want to lift people out of poverty, you get them work and increase job opportunity,” the state’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said. (And we all now how important the preservation of Black history is to white Republicans, amirite?)

It would be nice if these folks would stop playing around in our faces and stop looking for a practical reason to strip Great River Road of its historic landmark eligibility and just admit this is just more fallout from Trump’s “DEI should DIE” America. After all, there’s a trend here.

Earlier this week, we reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suspended a scholarship program for HBCUs that serviced nearly two dozen Black colleges and universities before Trump — who, during his first term, claimed HBCUs “never had better champions in the White House” — and his administration’s anti-DEI warpath came to take a wrecking ball to all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Anyway, let’s take a look at how Great River Road gained the eligibility that Republicans took away in the first place.

More from AP:

A multi-year National Park Service study on the area completed in October concluded that the “exceptional integrity” of the Great River Road landscape conveys “the feeling of living and working in the plantation system in the American South.”

Plantation buildings are so well-preserved that director Quentin Tarantino used them while filming “Django Unchained,” to capture the antebellum era. But there’s also a rich and overlooked history of the enslaved people who worked the plantations, their burial sites likely hidden in the surrounding cane fields and many of their descendants still living in tight-knit communities nearby.

The study deemed the region eligible to gain the same federal recognition as around 2,600 of the nation’s most important historical sites, including Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate and Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s residence.

However, the determination was “premature and untimely” given that a grain terminal that threatened to impact historic properties was no longer planned, said the National Park Service’s Joy Beasley, who oversees the designation of historic landmarks, in a Feb. 13 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers.

One can only wonder if MAGA-fied NPS reps would have felt the same way if they believed the preservation of Mount Vernon or Monticello would have gotten in the way of environmental or economic progress.

Nah — we don’t really have to wonder about that. 

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