Defense Department wipes 'Glory' Civil War hero from website

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Mar 20, 2025

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The Defense Department efforts to purge civil rights figures from its website led to the deletion of a page about Black Civil War hero Sgt. William Carney.

That link once directed readers to a biography about the Medal of Honor winner who inspired Denzel Washington’s character in the 1989 movie “Glory.”

It now leads to a 404 error page with the letters “DEI” in its URL. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News personality appointed by President Donald Trump, has made eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from the Defense Department’s public platforms a high priority.

Military site Task & Purpose first noticed Carney’s DoD page had been eliminated Wednesday morning. That’s also when a bio featuring baseball desegregation hero and Army veteran Jackie Robinson went missing from Defense.gov.

The “Meet Sgt. William Carney” article telling Carney’s story remained active on the U.S. Army’s website Thursday. It says Carney was born into slavery in Virginia, but relocated to Massachusetts where he joined the Union Army’s first official Black unit in 1863.

His finest hour in uniform occurred in July of that year when the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry Regiment charged the Confederacy’s Fort Wagner stronghold in Charleston, South Carolina.

When his unit’s color guard was wounded, Carney grabbed the flag and continued leading Union troops toward the fort, where he planted Old Glory in the sand.

“Carney lost a lot of blood and nearly lost his life, but not once did he allow the flag to touch the ground,” his bio reads.

That act of bravery was recreated for the final scene of the Civil War drama “Glory,” which made Washington an Academy Award winner.

The DoD bio about Carney was written in February 2017 to celebrate African American History Month.

“Why do you get rid of something like DEI?” Hegseth said during a speech at the Pentagon last month. “Because from our perspective, it’s served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting the force.”