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US National Archives Accused Of Censoring Civil Rights, Indigenous History

The National Archives of the US has come under fire for allegations of censoring history around Civil Rights leaders and Indigenous people.

As per a report by the Wall Street Journal, staff at the National Archives pointed serious allegations towards their director Colleen Shogan. Shogan took office in May 2023 after being appointed by US President Joe Biden. Since taking office, the staff alleged, she made multiple controversial changes to the displays at the institution.

Perhaps the most controversial of those changes was the removal of the photos of Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders from a photo booth. Instead, they were replaced by other prominent American figures like Richard Nixon, Elvis Presley, etc. Another controversial change was the removal of a series of photographs by Dorothea Lange. Lange had covered the forced relocation of Indigenous people at the World War II era camps once used for forced interment of American Japanese people. The photographs were seized by the army soon after getting clicked and were never published, only to be unceremoniously housed in the National Archives a few decades later. Sources suggested that Colleen Shogan ordered their removal for being “too negative”. The television also replaced the patent of birth control in a section dedicated to American inventions without any explanation.

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The staff had alleged that Shogan’s action had amounted to censorship. A complaint with similar allegations was filed at the US Office of Special Counsel. Meanwhile, there have been some high-level departures at the National Archives since the news broke.