Visitors revolt as Trump removes black veteran honors from cemetery

https://www.rawstory.com/alternet-posts/trump-cemetary/

Visitors to an American military cemetery in the Netherlands are pushing back following the removal of plaques honoring Black veterans of World War II, according to an NBC News report, seemingly done as part of Donald Trump's anti-diversity crusade.

Per the report, "visitors have filled the guestbook with objections" since the plaques came down earlier this year at the visitor center for the American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. The two displays honored Black soldiers who took part in the war effort and helped liberate Europe from Nazi control. Operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the cemetery is the final resting place for around 8,300 American soldiers.

As NBC noted, the cemetery's graves themselves were dug by an all-Black contingent of soldiers.

"One display told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier buried at the cemetery, who died attempting to rescue a comrade from drowning in 1945," the report explained. The other described the U.S. policy of racial segregation in place during World War II. Some 1 million Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in separate units, mostly doing menial tasks but also fighting in some combat missions. An all-Black unit dug the thousands of graves in Margraten during the brutal 1944-45 season of famine in the German-occupied Netherlands known as the Hunger Winter."