President Donald Trump issued a proclamation Friday night declaring February to be Black History Month in a more muted announcement than those he issued during his first term, following weeks of Trump attacking diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives through executive orders while an anti-DEI wave sweeps corporate America.
Trump has issued multiple executive orders attacking diversity, equity and inclusion in his second ... [+]
In his proclamation, Trump said Black Americans have been among the United States’ “most consequential leaders,” naming Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, conservative economist Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas and Tiger Woods.
Trump expressed “gratitude to black Americans for all they have done to bring us to this moment” and for advancing “the tradition of equality under the law.”
Black History Month proclamations are typical for presidents, and Trump made one each year throughout his first term.
Trump’s 2025 proclamation, however, is notably shorter than those he issued for Black History Month during his first term, and it makes no explicit mention of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement or landmark pieces of civil rights legislation, which he has cited in previous proclamations.
The proclamation also follows reports that the Defense Intelligence Agency would pause events and activities related to Black History Month or other identity-based observances, including Pride Month and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In his 2017 proclamation, Trump recognized the “toil and struggle” Black Americans have faced and voiced the “importance of teaching and reflecting upon” African American history—though as president, he would later go on to criticize the teaching of “critical race theory,” and he demanded an end to teaching “discriminatory equity ideology” in an executive order this week. In 2018, Trump recognized the “egregious discrimination and bigotry” Black Americans have faced and cited President Harry Truman’s 1948 desegregation of the military. Trump’s 2019 proclamation opened with an anecdote about the slave trade beginning in the American colonies in 1619 and acknowledged many Black Americans have lived through “segregation, racial prejudice, and discrimination.” In 2020, Trump acknowledged the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the “enduring legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement,” commending Americans who have fought for “racial equality.”
Trump has made eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion a cornerstone of the first days of his second term. Within hours of his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to eliminate DEI programs and offices, slamming them as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.” The following week, he issued another executive order eliminating DEI programs in the military and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, also effectively banning transgender troops in another executive order. Trump has also railed against DEI on Truth Social and in press interviews, baselessly claiming that diversity hiring “could have” played a role in the fatal Washington, D.C. airplane and helicopter collision earlier this week. During a press conference, and in a post on Truth Social, Trump quoted now-deleted language from the Federal Aviation Administration’s website that voiced a commitment to diversity and hiring people with disabilities, though this language existed on the FAA website throughout Trump’s first term.
Trump’s attacks on diversity have been accompanied by a wave of companies, including Target, Amazon, Meta and Walmart, scaling back their commitments to DEI. Target announced last week it would stop participating in external diversity surveys and phase out its Racial Equity Action and Change program, though it said it had reached this decision based on “many years of data.” Meta said last month it ended programs intended to increase hiring of diverse candidates, including its equity and inclusion training programs, with Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, citing the changing “legal and policy landscape.”