National Park Service scrubs Boston LGBTQ+ history in quiet purge of website

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Sebastian Belfanti, executive director of The West End Museum, isn’t directly tied to the NPS Boston changes. But he knows the precedent its actions might set for his work, which focuses on the many immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ who once called the neighborhood home.

The Trump administration canceled a $25,000 grant for a project focusing on LGBTQ+ history in the West End, in collaboration with The History Project. Without the White House recognizing trans and queer people, he said, it will be even harder to piece together history of Boston’s LGBTQ+ community, which often only shows up in a line or a hint in surviving records. If at all.

“It just takes a lot to know if you can even find anything,” Belfanti said.