A new sign required by the Trump Administration that now greets visitors to Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park is evidence, park supporters told Richmondside, of the president’s efforts to rewrite American history.
“Rosie the Riveter World War Two National Historic Park belongs to the American people,” states the sign, which sits next to a vintage-style Rosie lunch pail by the check-in desk and includes a QR code linking to a site where respondents can post their concerns about a variety of things, including whether they have “identified…any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.”
The sign, which the Department of the Interior (DOI) asked all National Parks to post by June 13, is part of President Donald Trump’s March 27 Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, ” NPR reported. Iconic Northern California and Bay Area parks are all listed, including Alcatraz, Yosemite, the San Francisco Maritime park, Muir Woods and the John Muir site in Martinez.
Historians and park advocates say this reflects the administration’s accelerating attacks on the National Parks Service.
“I think it’s appalling,” Rosie museum visitor and San Francisco resident Tom Driscoll told Richmondside on Wednesday. “I didn’t realize that all this mischief from Trump and his minions is getting down to this level.”
While the DOI has ordered the signs posted at all parks (ensuring that even the Rocky Mountains, for example, don’t “fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes,” as the sign reads), museums that tell stories about America’s more difficult historical episodes, as some of the Rosie park’s exhibits do, seem to make interpreting the sign’s intent particularly challenging.
The Rosie park, for example, includes exhibits about the internment of Japanese people during World War II and addresses the difficult working conditions Richmond shipyard workers faced, including racism and sexism.
“The purpose of the museum is not purely celebratory, but to raise questions in the minds of the visitors and that’s incredibly important,” Jim Davis, a retired history professor who gives lectures at the park, told Richmondside last year. “You question, you challenge, you dialogue; that’s how you learn history.”
Richmondside reached out to Rosie park and trust officials for comment but had not received a response as of publication time.
Referencing the museum’s Japanese internment exhibits, visitor and Berkeley resident Eileen Carabine told Richmondside she’s worried that this new policy aims to “erase history.”
“[Trump] wants to erase the past,” Carabine said. “And we need that past — we need to know what’s going on. Or else we’ll keep on repeating the same mistakes.”
Rosie sign among a series of clashes between Trump and historical and cultural institutions
The sign at the Rosie the Riveter park is just the latest flashpoint in a series of administrative attempts to alter the historical narrative. In March, anti-DEI efforts removed from government websites the stories of Native American “Code Talkers,” who aided encryption efforts during World War II. Recently, the administration announced plans to change the name of US Navy Ship Harvey Milk, named after the eponymous San Francisco gay rights activist.
In February, Richmondside reported that the Rosie park mistakenly removed an LGBTQ history-related exhibit in response to another Trump executive order. (The panels were returned after three days.)
[Trump] wants to erase the past. And we need that past — we need to know what’s going on. — Eileen Carabine, Rosie park visitor
“The parks service is one of our most important classrooms about the United States,” said Donna Graves, a Berkeley-based historian who was a historical consultant for the Rosie park. Every Richmond fourth-grade class, for example, visits the Rosie park.
“When most people think about National Parks, they think of Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, but all of the National Parks hold historical and cultural resources,” Graves said. “They’re the keepers of our national history.”
While presidential administrations have always used the parks to tell specific stories about American history, Graves described Trump’s recent actions as “unprecedented and comprehensive.”
“This is not only targeting the stories that all National Parks tell, but also the very purpose of public lands,” Graves said. “The Trump administration has been working to privatize more and more of our public lands.”
National Parks Conservation Association President Theresa Pierno emphasized this larger concern regarding autonomy.
“These signs are the latest in a long line of disturbing administration efforts to rewrite American history and undermine the Park Service,” Pierno wrote in a public statement. “Forcing rangers to post these signs is an outrage and shows deep contempt for their work to preserve and tell all American stories.”
Graves encouraged Rosie visitors to use the sign’s QR code not to criticize the museum, but to report their enjoyment of the park.
“[The Rosies] were terribly patriotic,” visitor Carabine pointed out.
The last paragraph suggests using the QR code to say how much you enjoy the museum. You could also say how appalling this sign is!!!