The Hill: Burying the past at military cemeteries doesn’t erase segregation
The Hill
December 18, 2025
People were stunned to learn that the American Battle Monuments Commission had taken down two plaques honoring victims of military segregation at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten in the Netherlands.
During my tour of that famed World War II cemetery in September, no one mentioned that, two years ago, a Heritage Foundation fellow had successfully argued for the Trump administration’s anti-DEI message to remove these plaques from the visitors center.
These historical revisionists underestimate the will of the community and Dutch civil rights advocates to set the record straight. Activists, including the team at blackliberators.nl, have worked for years to share the history of thousands of Black soldiers central to the Allied campaign that freed the Netherlands in 1944 and 1945.
These activists, including Dutch volunteers who have adopted 8,301 graves, have focused on the Black soldiers who dug graves at the Margraten cemetery and the little known story of America’s segregated 761st and 784th combat units, which were central to freeing Dutch cities from the Nazis.
One of the redacted panels includes a quote from veteran Jefferson Wiggins about racist discrimination targeting more than 900,000 Black American troops at home and abroad. Wiggins, one of 260 soldiers who served in the segregated burial unit at Margraten, is the subject of Mieke Kirkels’s book, “From Alabama to Margraten.”
During the frigid winter of 1944-45, Wiggins and other members of the unit wrapped 200 combat victims a day in mattress covers. These soldiers were laid to rest in graves often hammered out of the frozen ground with pickaxes. This was the only time in their service that Black soldiers at Margraten were allowed to come into direct physical contact with white comrades.
After every back breaking day, Wiggins returned to his segregated school housing. The Black soldiers who did the heavy lifting never had a chance to break bread in the canteen with their white commanders, who were billeted in a castle.
“So there we were, a group of Black Americans confronted with all these dead white Americans,” recalled Wiggins. “I realized that we had to bury them, but when they were alive we couldn’t sit in the same room. Something isn’t right here.”
Instead of being honored, America’s Black veterans in Europe were subject to every kind of discrimination imaginable, ranging from separate blood banks to being transferred to other countries for the “crime” of dating white Dutch women.
Back home, they were effectively denied GI bill money for college tuition and housing loans given to white soldiers. Many were attacked and, in some cases, lynched in their uniforms. This terror campaign horrified President Harry Truman, who brought down the curtain on American military segregation in 1948.
“Old Heart,” the film I wrote and produced, details the sole exception to World War II military segregation, the Red Ball Express. This integrated supply unit was critical to General Patton’s drive toward Berlin.
Black and white soldiers loaded 6,000 trucks in Normandy with crucial supplies. Seventy percent of the 23,000 drivers were Black. The units drove east through minefields and enemy fire under the leadership of white commanders. Between August and November 1944, they moved more than 400,000 tons of critical provisions to Allies fighting Hitler’s Army.
Unfortunately, writes Kirkels, “hardly anything” can “be found in Dutch archives or historical books about the role” of the thousands of Black soldiers who served in the Netherlands. For example, one reference book on fallen American military troops, “mentions the role of Black men once.”
Thanks to Kirkels’s advocacy and the Black liberators organization she cofounded, Wiggins Park was created near the Margraten cemetery. Dutch leaders all the way up to the royal palace have paid their respects to members of the burial unit, as well as the 171 Black soldiers laid to rest at Margraten.
Dutch political leaders, Dutch war museums and relatives of Black veterans are demanding that the missing Black history panels be restored to the visitor center’s walls.
In the U.S., 34 Democratic lawmakers have called for restoration of the panels, including one honoring George Pruitt, who drowned trying to save a comrade who had fallen into a freezing river.
Conversely, America’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Joe Popolo, defended the plaques’ removal, saying “The displays at Margraten are not here to push an agenda criticizing America.”
President Trump, who has never spent a day in uniform, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth must concede that America might not have survived without the courageous service of Black soldiers like Wiggins, going all the way back to the revolution of 1776.
Popolo, who donated over $1 million to Republican campaigns last year, should restore the missing plaques now. If he fails to act promptly, it is likely that replicas honoring these American heroes will find a new home in the vicinity of Wiggins Park.
Roger Rapoport is the producer/screenwriter of the feature film “Old Heart” about the hidden story of military segregation during World War II.