Hawkeye Reporter

The National Archives announced recently that they would post a "harmful content warning," said that "some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions" and elaborating that "some items may: reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes; be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more; include graphic content of historical events such as violent death, medical procedures, crime, wars/terrorist acts, natural disasters and more; demonstrate bias and exclusion in institutional collecting and digitization policies."

"The National Archives is trying to say certain documents may be very offensive to some people," Stewart Harris, teacher of constitutional law at Lincoln Memorial University, said according to WJHL. "They are recognizing that parts of our past are very troubling."

The National Archives held a meeting with 800 of its employees May 11 with its racism task force, Christianity Daily reported. During that meeting, a member presenting "told a story about a black congressional staffer who objected to the 'charters of freedom' label assigned to the historical documents" displayed in the archives rotunda in Washington D.C. He said that he felt "alienated" because they were not his charters of freedom.

Many members of Congress recently signed a letter addressed to the head of the National Archives stating that they are "deeply concerned" with the new harmful content warning on American historical documents, "including on seminal documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution."

No Iowa congressional members signed this letter.