Fact check: Did President Donald Trump ‘cancel' Black History Month?
After President Donald Trump signed executive orders in his first week in office ending federal programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and reversing executive enforcement of civil rights laws, public statements made on social media have suggested that the 47th president of the United States also moved to end the official observance of Black History Month.
'While someone has tried to cancel Black history month… that is NOT happening in our office,' wrote U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
Claims that Trump or the Executive Office of the President has canceled Black History Month appear to stem from a post from Mark Zaid, a prominent lawyer in Washington, D.C., who has represented federal government employees and whistleblowers. In an X post on Jan. 23, Zaid claimed that CIA employees were told that 'all resource & affinity groups are canceled.' He continued, 'No black history month or MLK celebration, or any other ethnic recognition months.'
A day earlier, the Trump administration ordered that all federal employees in DEI roles be placed on paid leave and eventually laid off.
While it's plausible Trump's executive orders may lead to a chilling effect on the celebration of Black History Month around the nation, despite Zaid's claim, there is currently no official order or directive to literally 'cancel' Black History Month from President Trump. Neither of Trump's anti-DEI orders — 'Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing' or 'Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity' — explicitly mentions Black History Month.
TheGrio did not receive an official response from the White House after inquiring about whether or not the administration had moved to end the observance of Black History Month; however, an official acknowledged President Trump's previous recognition of BHM and pointed to misinformation on social media related to growing public concerns.
During his first term as president, Trump signed proclamations every year observing 'National African American History Month' and held official White House events, which recognized the month and paid homage to Black Americans' contributions to the United States.
'From the earliest days of this nation, African-American leaders, pioneers, and visionaries have uplifted and inspired our country in art, science, literature, law, film, politics, business, and every arena of national life,' Trump said at a White House reception for BHM in 2019. 'The depth and glory of these contributions are beyond measure. You know it, I know it, and everybody knows it.'
At the time, Trump said it was important for the country to 'remember the heroic legacy of African Americans who bravely battled oppression to usher in a bright new dawn of freedom.'
Despite President Trump's past official recognition of Black History Month and the question of whether it will continue in his second term, civil rights leaders and policy advocates believe Trump's gutting of DEI across the federal government undermines and even reverses the progress Black Americans have achieved since the abolishment of slavery and racial segregation.
The National Urban League convened an emergency 'Demand Diversity' roundtable on Jan. 22 with civil rights leaders to talk through ways to resist Trump's actions and shield Black and other vulnerable communities from what they see as imminent policy harm.
'It's not about DEI; it's an attack on civil rights. It's an attack on the infrastructure inside the government that promoted equal opportunity, and it's stripping away the protections against race and gender and religious discrimination,' Marc Morial, president of National Urban League, told theGrio.
'All these offices were designed to promote equal opportunity. There's a distortion campaign that he's running and that they're running, which is an old campaign, that somehow these offices promoted some kind of preferential treatment.'
Civil rights groups have vowed to take the Trump administration to court over some of its actions related to enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial, gender, and religious discrimination.
'The Donald Trump and Republican Party stance on a democracy that includes all of us is pretty clear,' said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. 'If you're opposed to the things that they are claiming that they're opposed to, what you're essentially saying is the idea that folks who come from nontraditional backgrounds can't possibly be qualified to do the things that people who come from traditional backgrounds are qualified to do.'
He told theGrio, 'I do not think the American people voted to make our democracy more homogenous [and] to make it less diverse.'
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