C.R.T.

Black History Has the Power to Ignite Movements. That’s Why the Right Fears It.

The administration’s pre-emptive assault on history is a desperate attempt to stop new social movements from starting.

By Nicholas Powers ,

Truthout

November 29, 2025

A visitor browses an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on August 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong / Getty Images

Ilooked at the slave shackles in the exhibit. My ancestors wore chains like this one. A bone-deep sorrow hit. When I researched my family history, names began to vanish as I traced it to Indigenous and African slavery. Here, right in front of me was material proof of the horror they survived. What is my responsibility to them?

The Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. is a soul-shaking experience. Going from the bottom level to the higher exhibits, visitors take the journey from slavery to freedom. I went years ago, and decided to go again with family and friends. During the government shutdown, the closed museum doors were symbolic of a larger right-wing attack. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have censored Black history, pulled Black books, removed Black Lives Matters icons, and led to a mass firing of Black federal employees.

The right wing suppresses Black history because it ignites social movements. Black history transforms rage into activism by putting racist events into a larger story of struggle against oppression. It shines a light on a hidden past. It exposes the hypocrisy of MAGA.

The right-wing attack on Black history is stupid, cruel, and futile. The logical end of censoring Black history is national suicide. Black history is a legacy with lessons that can heal the divides in the U.S. and repair our relationship to the world. Black history can free us from the right-wing image of the U.S. as a white Christian nationalist utopia, which never existed, and lead us to a clear-eyed radical realism. Black history bears a truth that makes it possible, finally, to create a future we can live in as liberated beings.


Trump’s War on Black America



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Trump and MAGA are waging war on Black America. They have attacked it on three fronts; Black culture, Black economics, and voting rights. The attack on history is the most dangerous, because history gives birth to new protests.

Black history bears a truth that makes it possible, finally, to create a future we can live in as liberated beings.

In March, federal workers aimed jackhammers at the Black Lives Matter mural — blocks from the White House — and destroyed it. Less than a mile away, the African American Museum of D.C. was closed during the shutdown and has only recently reopened.

Trump came out the gate of his second presidency with a barrage of executive orders. One executive order titled “Ending Racial Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” led to Black-authored books being yanked from school libraries run by the Department of Defense. Trump shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. He terrified business leaders with possible DEI investigations. Black history month celebrations were cancelled at federal agencies.

In a perverse kind of trickle-down racism, Trump’s attack on Black Lives Matter became a permission structure for increased on-the-ground bigotry. White influencers proudly wore blackface for Halloween. Politico exposed a Young Republicans’ chat where they gleefully traded racist comments. Black comedian W. Kamau Bell has painted a portrait of a right-wing shift in standup performances in which anti-trans jokes and anti-Black slurs have become commonplace. This is not a series of isolated events: FBI statistics on anti-Black hate crime, consistently the most common form of hate crime, spiked during Trump’s two terms.

Side by side with the cultural attack is an economic one. Remember Elon Musk proudly waving a chainsaw at CPAC? Well, it worked. Black women’s unemployment leapt from 5.9 percent in February to 7.5 percent in September. Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and attacks on “DEI” forced 300,000 Black women out of their jobs. Put that number next to the 2003 statistic that 64 percent of Black families are led by a single parent, most of whom are single mothers, and the effects are devastating. Women are now trying to hold families together without work or health care.

When seen in that light, a closed history museum may seem to be at the bottom of the list of things to worry about. Yet a living relationship to history has the power to create a political consciousness for resistance. The ripping up of Black Lives Matter’s art, the censoring of Black books, the effort to whitewash Black history — all are part of a desperate attempt to stop a new social movement before it starts.

The Past Transforms Us

Emmett Till’s casket was right there, and no one could speak. I stood with visitors to the African American Museum in D.C., and the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” exhibit that highlights the Civil Rights Era weighed on us. To be in the presence of history, to be inches away from the casket that Emmett Till lay in, was dizzying.

The ripping up of Black Lives Matter’s art, the censoring of Black books, the effort to whitewash Black history — all are part of a desperate attempt to stop a new social movement before it starts.

Trump actually visited the museum in 2017 and in a somber tone, said, “This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes, heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass.” Eight years later, in August 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” Well, that’s a 180-degree turn.

Why the change? Two events upset Trump’s first term: COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Protests against police brutality have been ocean tides in the Black Freedom Struggle, of which BLM is the most recent wave.

Black protests against police brutality go far back. We see it in Abolitionists fighting the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and we see resistance in the Red Summer of 1919. Racist brutality sparked the Harlem riots of 1935 and 1943. In 1991, the police beating of Rodney King led to the L.A. riots. In 1999 the police murder of Amadou Diallo and the 2006 killing of Sean Bell launched marches. Wave after wave reached higher and higher. In 2020, BLM became a tsunami of protest, the largest in U.S. history — and it was also strong enough to carry voters to the polls and throw Trump out of office.

The Black Freedom Movement has more power than any president or any system. Trump knows this. MAGA knows this. This is why they erase Black history. The past transforms us, it fires up dormant desires. It realigns us with our ancestors. Black artists and intellectuals always documented the dramatic effect of learning about Black history.

Assata Shakur wrote in her 1988 autobiography, Assata, “I didn’t know what a fool they made of me until I grew up and started reading real history.”

Malcolm X wrote in his 1965 classic, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “History had been ‘whitened’ in the white man’s history books and the black man had been brainwashed for hundreds of years.”

From Frederick Douglass to Dead Prez, Ida B. Wells to Alicia Garza, knowing one’s history has always been the key ingredient to activating Black consciousness.

The Black thinker who systemized this transformation is Dr. William E. Cross in his 1971 essay, “The Negro-to-Black Conversion Experience.” Cross had a front-row seat to the 1968 climax of rebellion. He repeatedly saw apolitical brothers and sisters sparked by the revolution; they shed old lives, old fashions, and old ideas, and re-emerged in the street, wearing afros and bright pan-African colors. They went through stages like a butterfly molting in a cocoon, flying out, free as themselves.

Black history is the cocoon; it is the stories and imagery, the feeling of ancestors, it is the site of transformation. When millions upon millions undergo that change, like during the George Floyd protests, it becomes a historical force. A meteorologist, trying to show how interconnected all things are, once said that a flap of a butterfly’s wings can set off a tornado. It’s true. Why? The more that racists try to repress our history, the more we use it to explain what is happening, and how to fight back. The next social movement is already beginning, like a tornado.

As Pressure Builds, More Will Find Our History

When I finished my tour of the African American Museum, I was at the top floor. Sunlight came through the windows. The building is designed to recreate the journey from slavery to freedom. Standing at the top, I felt deeply moved.

Black history is the cocoon; it is the stories and imagery, the feeling of ancestors, it is the site of transformation.

The power of history, especially at a museum, is that right there under glass is evidence of our past. Flesh fades to dust. Bones crumble. Yet here are real things touched by real people. This is why the African American Museum in D.C. is the crown jewel of a large network of Pan-African historical sites. In New York, there’s the African Burial Ground. In Boston, there’s the Black Heritage Trail. In Tennessee, there’s the National Civil Rights Museum. In Ghana, there are slave castles and the heart-wrenching Door of No Return. The interconnected network of sites creates multiple transformation zones, where people enter and come out changed. When we leave, we take this history with us.

The tragedy of this moment is that Trump and MAGA have succumbed to a juvenile, cartoon version of history. If they turn back time, they believe, the joy of unlimited power will be at their fingertips. The harder they push for total control, the more pressure they place on masses of people. The government shutdown worsened hunger. People in the U.S. are facing even more unpayable health insurance. Rage at ICE builds in neighborhoods as masked agents separate families.

Under this pressure, many are forced to ask questions. When they do, they will find answers waiting for them. They will find our history.

Expect more tornados to come.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Nicholas Powers
Nicholas Powers is the author of Thirst, a political vampire novel; The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street; and most recently, Black Psychedelic Revolution. He has been writing for Truthout since 2011. His article, “Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life” in the Truthout anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? coalesces his years of reporting on police brutality.

Great American Anti-Fascists

Stephen F. Eisenman

October 10, 2025



Sue Coe, Terrible things are happening outside, 2025. Courtesy, the artist.

“First they came”

I always scoffed at “First They Came,” the often quoted, 1946 poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. There are several versions of it, but the best-known starts “First they came for the communists/And I did not speak out because I was not a communist.” Each of the following three verses names another target — socialists, trade unionists and Jews, until concluding: “Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.”

The poem suggests, wrongly, that “they” – the unmentioned Nazis – targeted everyone, not just communists, socialists, trade unionists and Jews. (Niemöller should have added to the list queers, Roma, Slavs, and the disabled.) In fact, the Nazi regime made great efforts to placate the broad, middle and lower-middle class populace and increase its size. Nazism was aggressively pro-natalist, rewarding families that had many children, so long as they were the right kind. In addition, the secret Lebensborn (“fount of life”) program, established by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, supported unwed, supposedly “Aryan” mothers through their pregnancies and distributed the children to similarly racially elite, SS parents. The goals of these initiatives were eugenicist and militarist: the creation of a racially superior population and enough soldiers to forge and sustain a thousand-year Reich.

The Nazis, in other words, knew very well who they wanted to imprison or kill and who they wanted to protect or nurture, and the idea that they would inevitably “come for” someone not on their targeted list is mistaken. Niemöller’s poem is harmful because it suggests that anyone could be a victim of fascism when in fact only some are; protecting those in danger requires solidarity and entails risk. To the pastor’s credit, he openly opposed Nazification of the Protestant Church and was consequently cast into Sachsenhausen and then Dachau concentration camps. Much later, long after the Nazi defeat, pastor Niemöller was active in the anti-Vietnam War and anti-nuclear movements. His poem is therefore belied by his own life; he understood very well who were and who were not the likely victims of fascism and embraced the role of anti-fascist or “antifa” to use the shorthand beloved of Reichkanzler Trump, Reichsmarschall Hegseth, and Reichsministers Miller, Bondi, Patel, Holman, Noem, and Kennedy.

Carefully selected targets

Until about two weeks ago, the Trump administration carefully followed the script of “First They Came.” One by one, it targeted groups and individuals who might challenge the kleptocratic, neofascist state, confident that it could do so without significant resistance. First it was the special counsels and ombudsmen who policed federal agencies for corruption. Then it was the U.S. Attorneys and prosecutors whose job is to ensure that federal laws are faithfully executed, and violators punished. Following that, was the regulatory state. Even junior employees were fired if they worked for agencies – including EPA, Education, Justice, Treasury, HUD, Interior, and HHS – who might object to privatization, deregulation, and sleaze.

Then came the attacks on individuals and institutions of civil society. University presidents were dressed down by Republicans at congressional show trials. (It didn’t help that these leaders conceded error of which they were innocent.) Around a dozen college and university presidents have resigned in the face of administration, congressional Republican, or state Republican pressure. Other universities were forced to accept limitations on their institutional freedom or make cash payments (aka bribes) to continue to receive federal grants. Columbia coughed up $200 million. Many colleges and universities pro-actively limited student and faculty free-speech rights in the hope of avoiding government or conservative trustee sanction.

Law firms too have been targeted. Despite court rulings consistently affirming the right of attorneys to choose their own clients without fear of federal retribution, at least eight major firms – most notably Paul Weiss — acceded to Trump’s demands that they pay money or provide pro bono services in exchange for continuing access to lucrative U.S. government contracts. Other civil society organizations, including non-profits focused on women’s health, the environment, civil rights, immigration law, and fair housing, have had grants cancelled or awards rescinded. Many have changed their rhetoric and programs so as not to attract Trump administration ire. Entertainment companies and sports franchises have also bowed to Trumpian pressure to change programming or limit outreach to targeted communities, especially immigrants. The German word for such a coordinated pressure campaign, first used in 1933, is Gleichschaltung: bringing all institutions of state and civil society into conformity with Nazi ideology and practice.

By attacking each group — universities, law firms, non-profits, media companies — separately and in succession, the Trump administration has succeeded in keeping them isolated, unable to marshal the solidarity and collective strength available to them. To be sure, many of the richest and most powerful corporate heads and tech entrepreneurs – Elon Musk at Tesla, Larry Ellison at Oracle, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Sam Altman at Open AI, Tim Cook at Apple, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Peter Thiel, and others – have welcomed Trump’s strong-armed interventions. They support technocratic Caesarism – rule by one or several tech and finance billionaires beholden to no one, and believe Trump is sympathetic to their goal, despite the president’s claim to speak for a broad, working-class MAGA base. Indeed, low-income Republicans have been assaulted by tariffs, elimination of green energy subsidies, and soon, cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, but their congressional representatives have registered no protest. They remain fully in Trump’s thrall. Small business leaders and professionals, harmed by the president’s tariff, deregulation, and immigration policies, have similarly remained quiet out of fear of reprisal.

Larger goals

Trump’s dismantling of democracy has been methodical and effective and has served his primary goal: self-aggrandizement. But the president’s most influential courtiers, including Stephen Miller, Russell Vought and J.D. Vance as well as the ideologues of the Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute, have other ambitions, broadly consonant with the fascism of interwar Europe. Their goals are to:

1) Purify the body politic by the deportation or exclusion of non-whites.

2) Embed Christian nationalist ideology in government and educational institutions.

3) Broadcast and promote American exceptionalism.

4) Reject feminism, invigorate patriarchy, and denounce non-binary models of gender.

5) Insulate or protect the corporate elite from regulation, taxation, and organized labor.

6) End competitive elections. Vance whisperer Curtis Yarvin supports a monarchy. Marco Rubio’s former Director of Policy Planning, Michael Anton, prefers a Caesar.

7) Destroy the disinterested, professional, government bureaucracy, and slash spending on health, food, education, housing and environmental protection.

8) Revive the American empire by alignment with Russia (a racial comrade) and antagonism to China (a racial foe).

9) Buttress the Leadership cult: Trump als Führer. (This is Trump’s personal favorite.)

10) Welcome environmental catastrophe. Umberto Eco wrote: “The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to death.”

Anybody who opposes these ten goals is anti-fascist or antifa; they are enemies of the regime.

Coordination interruptus

Buoyed by success, the Trump administration decided to press its advantage; Niemöller’s final stage of political capture — “then they came for me/And there was no one left” — is the order of the day. Having begun the work of Gleichschaltung mere months ago, the Trump regime now wants to foreclose democracy altogether — if not for a thousand years, at least beyond the 2026 midterm elections.

But the necessary work of coordination remains unfinished. Unlike Germany in 1933-34, the administration lacks SA or SS enforcers. ICE, FBI, and other federal forces – abusive and violent as they are — remain constrained by custom and law. The judicial branch of government is not yet fully co-opted, as indicated by the succession of lower court rulings barring immigrant expulsions, executive branch dismissals, and placement of federal troops in cities. While many of these decisions have been reversed by the Supreme Court, every defeat – even temporary — exposes administration weakness and invites resistance. Legislative opposition exists too, just not from Republicans. Democrats in Congress may be feckless, but they are large in number. Their size has prevented Trump from passing anything like the Enabling Act of 1933 that provided Hitler an easy glide path to authoritarianism. Civil society organizations, including wealthy, liberal-left foundations are also still functioning. Counter-hegemonic non-profits remain active and, in some cases, more energized than before. Most colleges and universities, and most law firms have not (so far) yielded to Trump’s threats.

While the mass media have long been colonized by conservative and even fascist provocateurs – Steve Banon, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Candace Owen, Jesse Wattters, Joe Rogan and many others – their reach is less extensive than it seems. Even the biggest outlet is small by historical standards. At the height of its popularity in the early 1960s, Walter Cronkite’s “CBS Evening News” had 30 million viewers, or about 15% of the U.S. population. Today, Fox’s most popular conservative talk show, “The Five” has 3.5 million viewers, or just 1% of the population. Steve Bannon’s WarRoom podcast has 85,000 listeners per month. (Counterpunch has more than five times that number of monthly readers.) So far, the right has been unable to dismantle the left ecosystem of magazines, podcasts, and broadcasts. Mainstream TV hosts Stephen Colbert, John Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel and the rest may not be very “left,” but they are certainly oppositional. Colbert and Kimmel each have about 2 million nightly viewers. Given this ideologically fractured environment, the question arises: Has Trump’s effort at fascist coordination reached its apogee, and will it now begin to recede? Is this a case of coordination interruptus?

Whither NSPM-7?

On September 25, 2025, the White House issued a memorandum, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence”. The document falsely asserts that there has been a dramatic upsurge in “violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism.” The directive goes on to state: “This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” A previous Executive Order designated “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization,” even though no such group exists, and there is no legal category “domestic terrorist organization.”

Memorandum NSPM-7 then directs the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (established in 1980 and led by the FBI) to investigate and prosecute political violence and its institutional or individual funders, as well as identify “any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity.” Poor writing masks the author’s intentions here, but the memorandum proceeds to designate troubling “indicia”:

“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The vagueness of the targeting is breathtaking; it would be hard to find anybody who isn’t hostile – sometimes or always — to “traditional American values on family, religion and morality.” Isn’t that the topic of conversation or at least the undercurrent at most family dinner tables?

Though the memorandum doesn’t specifically target Democrats, Trump, Miller and others have elsewhere called them “vermin,” “an enemy within”, “gnats” and the “party of hate, evil and Satan.” Simply being a Democrat thus makes you a subject for investigation. About 45 million people in the U.S. are registered Democrats. (37 million are Republicans.) Kamala Harris gained 75 million votes; Biden got 81 million in 2020. Are we all antifa now?

With the federal government shutdown, prices rising, employment falling, health insurance set to increase (in many cases double) for millions of Americans, a recession likely, and an enemies list as large as half the U.S. population, Trump may finally succeed in forging solidarity among his enemies, thereby creating the very bogey he imagined, a genuine antifa movement. And if that happens, there will be an army of people ready to “speak out for me.”

Great American anti-fascists

The following is a list of famous or notable anti-fascists, or antifas. They are not all radicals, socialists, liberals, or even Democrats — but they are anti-fascist. Trump would sic ICE on them if he could. Feel free to add names to the list and send them to me:

Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, Aaron Burr (not for shooting Hamilton), William Lloyd Garrison, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglas, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Henry Ward Beecher, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, the Union Army, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Louisa May Walcott, Henry David Thoreau, William Dean Howells, Edward Bellamy, Margaret Fuller, Thorstein Veblen, Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman, Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Jane Addams, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Georgia O’Keefe, Helen Keller, Franklin Roosevelt, George S. Patton, 2.5 million U.S. troops in the European theatre of war in World War II, Clifford Odets, Eleonor Roosevelt, John Garfield, Humphrey Bogart, Dashiell Hammett, Edward G. Robinson, Dorothy Parker, Orson Welles, Billie Holiday, Robert Ryan, Lillian Hellman, Henry Fonda, the Marx brothers, Meyer Schapiro, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Norman Lewis, Ad Reinhardt, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Frank Sinatra (for a while), Woodie Guthrie, Theodore Bikel, Joan Baez, Jackson Pollock, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, Benjamin Spock, Allen Ginsberg, William Kunstler, Louis Armstong, Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, Martin Luther King, Muhammed Ali, Angela Davis, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Phil Ochs, Gil Scott-Heron, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Max Roach, Mahalia Jackson, Stanley Kubrick, Zero Mostel, Norman Lear, Spike Lee, Jane Fonda, LeBron James, Billie Eilish, Tom Hanks, AOC, Jamelle Bouie, Joaquin Phoenix, Bernie…

Illustration by Sue Coe.


Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His latest book, with Sue Coe, is titled “The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism,” (OR Books). He is also co-founder and Director of Strategy at Anthropocene Alliance. He can be reached at s-eisenman@northwestern.edu

Trump Wants to Bury Slavery. My Family Went South to Unearth It.


Trump wants a populace unaware of the Black freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans.

By Jesse Hagopian , 

Truthout

September 12, 2025

Visitors browse an exhibition about slavery in the United States at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on August 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong / Getty Images
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Donald Trump wants slavery buried — without even a headstone to mark that it existed.

In August, he fumed that the Smithsonian was “OUT OF CONTROL” for showing “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was.”

He has always trafficked in historical distortion. But his latest denial of slavery’s horrors is an escalation: It seeks to put the truth in chains, shackling history in service of his brand of MAGA fascism. Authoritarianism depends on erasing, distorting, and rewriting history so that violence and repression appear justified and inevitable. That’s why Trump has declared war on museums, schools, and curricula: If he can control the story of slavery, he can control the meaning of freedom


In a recent social media post, Trump lashed out at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, accusing it of focusing too much on slavery and not enough on the “Success” and “Brightness,” of the United States. His words came as his administration launched a 120-day review of museum exhibits, demanding curators “adjust any content” that does not sufficiently align with “American ideals.” He further boasted that he had instructed his attorneys to “go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” In other words, this was no stray rant — it was a declaration of intent to make museums the next battlefield in his war on truth.

To be clear, this isn’t the first time Trump has lied about slavery. In a June 2024 speech to the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, he falsely claimed that George Washington “probably didn’t” own enslaved people. In reality, Washington “owned” 123 enslaved Black people, and the total number of enslaved people on his Mount Vernon chattel labor complex (politely referred to as his plantation) swelled to 317 when he married his wife, Martha. That’s because she brought with her another 153 enslaved human beings inherited from her first husband. Washington owned Black people until his last breath, and upon his death, he bequeathed his human property to his wife.

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Washington was no “benevolent master.” He aggressively pursued runaway slaves — including Ona Judge, who escaped from his plantation and was never caught. He condoned the brutal violence that kept slavery in place. There is record of Washington ordering an enslaved man to be whipped for walking on the lawn. His secretary once recorded that “no whipping is allowed without a regular complaint & the defendant found guilty of some bad deed” — with “guilt” determined entirely by Washington or his overseers. Overseer Humphrey Knight reported to Washington in 1758: “As to the Carpenters, I have minded em all I possibly could, and has whipt em when I could see a fault.”

This was the daily terror George Washington used that kept human beings in chains.

Trump’s recent comments attempting to whitewash slavery are part of a broader movement to replace critical thinking with what I call “Uncritical Race Theory” — an ideology that denies the brutality of slavery and the centrality of it to the U.S. economy, while promoting the idea that racism either doesn’t exist; or if it does exist, primarily harms white people; or is only the product of individual prejudice, never systemic or institutional.

Uncritical Race Theory vs. Education

Uncritical Race Theory is quickly becoming official state doctrine — even if its architects are too dishonest to call it that — and it’s spreading across the country.

Florida’s official curriculum — not the Klan’s youth handbook, but the state’s actual standard — now claims slavery was of “personal benefit” to Black peoples. Under Trump, the National Park Service even scrubbed Harriet Tubman from its Underground Railroad webpage, replacing her story of defiance with a sanitized theme of “Black/White cooperation.”

In Oklahoma, the assault on truth has reached a new low. Superintendent Ryan Walters decreed that teachers moving from California or New York must pass a certification exam before entering a classroom — a modern-day loyalty oath straight out of the McCarthy era. The kicker? It’s not overseen by educators or universities but by PragerU. Despite its name, PragerU isn’t a university; it’s a $60 million right-wing media company producing slick propaganda targeting kids that is designed to normalize whitewashed myths. Already, PragerU curriculum is approved for use in classrooms in public schools in at least eight states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Louisiana, South Carolina, Idaho, and Arizona.

And at the federal level, Trump is cutting PBS funding while embracing PragerU as the White House’s preferred alternative. PragerU explicitly notes it aims to capitalize on the defunding of PBS to go “toe-to-toe with PBS Kids.”

Consider one PragerU’s cartoons: Two kids travel back to meet Christopher Columbus and ask about his enslavement of Indigenous people. Columbus shrugs: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.” The children assure him slavery isn’t allowed in the 21st century, and Columbus convinces them it isn’t fair to judge him by the standards of the future. In short, the video teaches children not to “see the problem” with slavery, that criticism of enslavement is unfair, and that the real danger lies not in mass human bondage but in judging history too harshly.

Yet, even in his own time, Columbus faced condemnation. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish colonist turned Dominican friar, publicly denounced the violence against the Indigenous Taíno people. In his History of the Indies, de las Casas wrote that the Spanish “took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags … roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil!’… They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground … then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.”

His opposition proves that Columbus’s actions were not judged harshly only by later generations — they were decried by people who witnessed them firsthand.

In another video, PragerU commits a full-on memory hole rewrite by putting deceitful words into the mouth of Frederick Douglass. The cartoon depicts kids traveling back to 1852 to meet Douglass, who tells them, “Our founding fathers knew that slavery was evil and wrong … they wanted it to end … there was no real movement anywhere in the world to abolish slavery before the American founding … our system is wonderful.”

Pause for a moment to let this flagrant insult to truth and this obscene perversion of history sink in. PragerU actually portrays Frederick Douglass — a man who dedicated his life to destroying slavery — as declaring “our system is wonderful.” And not in some vague, ahistorical sense, but in 1852, the very year Douglass delivered his most blistering indictment of the United States in his famous oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In that speech, Douglass declared, “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour … for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

Where Douglass eviscerated the United States for its barbarity and hypocrisy, PragerU recasts him as a cheerleader for American exceptionalism. This is not history — it is indoctrination. It erases the radical truth-telling of one of the greatest abolitionists in history and replaces it with the very lies he spent his life fighting.
Unearthing History They Want Buried

In his book How the Word Is Passed, poet, historian, and best-selling author Clint Smith writes:


The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it…. We can learn this history by standing on the land where it happened. And we can learn this history from our own families, by sitting down and having conversations with our elders and getting insight into all that they’ve seen.

While Trump and his coterie of uncritical race theorists work to bury history, I went South this summer to unearth mine.

Several years ago, my father discovered the locations of the plantations where our family had been enslaved. Since then, my father, brother, son, and I have been traveling to Lawrence County and Morgantown, Mississippi, to stand on that land and to continue work on a documentary about our family’s history of enslavement and resistance. Being there with three generations of our family was no abstract history lesson — it was an act of radical remembering.


There are still people alive today who knew those who had been enslaved. That history isn’t distant — it’s still breathing beside us.

We went to honor Thomas and Laura Lenoir, my great-great-grandparents. Laura was born in 1852, the same year Frederick Douglass delivered his scorching speech condemning slavery. That connection brought history into sharper focus. I found myself wondering: What would Laura say today about PragerU’s grotesque distortions — about the attempt to twist the year of her birth into a fable that recasts Douglass’s searing denunciation as praise for the very system that enslaved her?

Last summer, we installed a headstone to mark Thomas and Laura’s resting place and legacy. As we gathered with community members, a woman in her 90s approached me with something that stopped me cold: she had once been friends with my great-great-grandmother Laura. That revelation hit me like a thunderclap. There are still people alive today who knew those who had been enslaved. That history isn’t distant — it’s still breathing beside us.

Then she told another story I’ll never forget. During Jim Crow, Black families in her town built a preschool for their children. The Ku Klux Klan burned it down, hoping to drive them away. But the community members didn’t run. They armed themselves, rebuilt the school in a tent, and stayed. They fought back. They held on.

Later in our trip, we had the opportunity to meet with descendants of those who had enslaved our family. They gave us a rare and chilling gift that had been passed down through their family: an original copy of The Laws of Mississippi, 1823. Inside was a statute criminalizing Black education and gathering, which states: “All meetings or assemblages of slaves, or free negroes, or mulattoes, mixing and associating with such slaves, at any school or schools for teaching them reading or writing … shall be deemed and considered an unlawful assembly … The officer … shall have power to inflict … twenty lashes on his or their bare back … and shall be entitled to receive … twenty-five cents for each slave so punished.”

This was their blueprint for white supremacist control designed to choke out Black literacy before it could ever become resistance. And yet, in the face of these laws, our ancestors gathered anyway. Learned anyway. Taught anyway.

In fact, while searching courthouse records, we made a stunning discovery: the signature of my great-great-grandmother Laura Lenoir. Whereas many documents signed by formerly enslaved people had an X, Laura hand signed her name!

So we know she could write. Did she secretly learn during slavery, risking everything? Was she part of the extraordinary wave of learning during Reconstruction, when Black communities built the public schools and a movement for mass education? Did she ever feel the sting of the lash for daring to write, as that law demanded?

We may never know the details. But we know this: she learned. She wrote. And she passed the value of education for liberation on to her posterity; Laura had 15 children, with one dying as a child, and she put all 14 of her surviving children through college. Her son York Alanozo Lenoir — my great-grandfather — even became a teacher and principal and started Black schools around the South. Despite the government sanctioning beatings for literacy and the KKK burning down schools, my family and their communities refused to submit to white supremacist terror.
Radical Remembering in an Age of Lies

This is the history Trump and his allies want erased — not because it’s divisive, but because it’s powerful. Because it tells the truth about Black resistance, Black dignity, and the long shadow of slavery. The lies of today’s politicians and groups like PragerU are so dangerous because they revive the logic of those 1823 laws: controlling knowledge to control freedom.

And let’s be clear: Trump’s lies, and the policies that follow them, aren’t only about disgracing Laura and Thomas or making history palatable for those who want a fantasy version of the U.S. Trump wants a populace unaware of the Black freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans.


This isn’t the first time we’ve faced fascism in the U.S., and it isn’t the first time we’ve fought back.

“Authoritarian regimes often find history profoundly threatening,” writes Jason Stanley, in his book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. “At every opportunity, these regimes find ways of erasing or concealing history in order to consolidate their power… All of this is true of authoritarianism in general, but it is especially true of one specific kind of authoritarian ideology: fascism.”

We are watching this fascist formula being rolled out around the country: deploying federal agents to occupy majority-Black cities under the banner of “law and order”; threatening to send the National Guard into urban areas with Black leadership; purging diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; demanding loyalty tests for teachers; and imposing Uncritical Race Theory as official curriculum.

Trump’s fascist project piles onto the U.S.’s ongoing systemic racism — the racial wealth gap, voter suppression, mass incarceration, and police terror — all legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.

When the woman in her 90s told me how her community armed itself and rebuilt their preschool in a tent after the KKK burned it down, I understood two things on a much deeper level: This isn’t the first time we’ve faced fascism in the U.S., and it isn’t the first time we’ve fought back — defending our communities and expanding our rights in the process.

Let her story summon in you the courage to join the struggles of today: to defend history in our schools and museums, to resist occupying armies in our cities, to stop immigration raids that are tearing families apart, and to reject every policy that seeks to bury truth and terrorize the vulnerable.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Jesse Hagopian
Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools, and the author of the book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. You can follow him at IAmAnEducator.com, Instagram, Bluesky or Substack.

White House's review of Smithsonian content could reach into classrooms nationwide

MAKIYA SEMINERA
Sun, September 7, 2025


In this Sept. 3, 2025 photo, Samuel J. Redman, Ph.D., Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program at the University of Massachusetts, sits in front of content he uses from the Smithsonian on campus in Amherst, Mass. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)More

High school history teacher Katharina Matro often pulls materials from the Smithsonian Institution website as she assembles her lessons. She trusts its materials, which don't require the same level of vetting as other online resources. She uses documents and other primary sources it curates for discussions of topics like genocide and slavery.

As the White House presses for changes at the Smithsonian, she's worried she may not be able to rely on it in the same way.

“We don’t want a partisan history," said Matro, a teacher in Bethesda, Maryland. "We want the history that’s produced by real historians.”

Far beyond museums in Washington, President Donald Trump's review at the Smithsonian could influence how history is taught in classrooms around the country. The institution is a leading provider of curriculum and other educational materials, which are subject to the sweeping new assessment of all its public-facing content.

Trump is moving to bring the Smithsonian into alignment with his vision of American history. In a letter last month to the Smithsonian Institution, the White House said its review is meant to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.” It’s part of Trump’s agenda to “celebrate American exceptionalism” by removing “divisive or partisan narratives,” it said.

Those opposed to the changes fear they will promote a more sanitized version of American history.

In celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary next year, the Education Department recently launched the White House's Founders Museum in partnership with PragerU, a conservative nonprofit that produces videos on politics and history. Visitors to the museum in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, as well as the White House website, can read biographies on the signers of the Declaration of Independence and watch videos that depict them speaking.

“Real patriotic education means that just as our founders loved and honored America, so we should honor them,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a PragerU video introducing the project.

The project mentions some signers favoring abolition and includes Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who became the first published Black female poet in the U.S. But critics say it brushes over some of the nation’s darker past.

“Those are the kinds of things that teachers are really leery of because they don't see partisanship in the sources that we're using as being good educational practice,” said Tina Ellsworth, president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

History teachers use supplemental resources over textbooks

Like many other history teachers, Matro said she turns to materials from the Smithsonian because she doesn't have the time to create lessons from scratch or the budget to buy the latest books. She favors the museum's digitized collections to guide her classes.

“I don’t have to figure out ‘is this real? Is this not real?’ I can trust the descriptions of the artifact,” she said.

More than 80% of history teachers report using free resources from federal museums, archives and institutions including the Smithsonian, according to an American Historical Association survey last year.

The federal institutions' materials have been widely trusted partly because they are thoroughly examined by professionals, said Brendan Gillis, the historical association's director of teaching and learning. Some teachers have out-of-date history textbooks, and online resources from institutions like the Smithsonian can fill the gaps, he said.

“That’s been one of the most influential and profoundly important ways that the federal government has invested in social studies education over the last couple of decades,” Gillis said.

While education always has been part of the Smithsonian's mission, developing materials specifically for classrooms became more prevalent after World War II, said William Walker, a State University of New York, Oneonta, professor who has researched the Smithsonian’s history. The museum organizes professional development workshops for teachers and offers materials ranging from worksheets to videos.

Russell Jeung, an Asian-American studies professor at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, took part in a Smithsonian video series in 2020 meant to educate high schoolers and adults on racism and discrimination against Asians during the COVID-19 pandemic and other points in American history.

Jeung said he expects the project will be shelved by the White House review.

“I think the story will be told,” Jeung said. “But the tragedy again and the loss is that we won’t get the national recognition that we deserve.”

In recent years, many states have passed laws adopting guidelines on how schools can address topics including racism, sexism and other topics. And professional groups say teachers will continue to adapt and find resources to put historical events in due context, regardless of what happens at the Smithsonian.

“Education is always political, so we know that as social studies teachers, it’s our job to navigate that terrain, which we do and we do well,” Ellsworth said.

Educators worry students will be turned off on history

Michael Heiman, a longtime social studies teacher in Juneau, Alaska, said he typically had his students do a scavenger hunt of artifacts in a virtual Smithsonian tour.

He said the exhibits always have been culturally inclusive and if that changes, he worries it would affect students of color he's taught, including Native American children. It could discourage them from pursuing careers in museum sciences or engaging with history at all, he said.

“We are further quieting voices that are important to our country,” Heiman said. “We are also restricting certain kids in those underrepresented populations to really understand more about their past.”

About a decade ago, graduate students of history professor Sam Redman at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, had the opportunity to collaborate with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for a blog series commemorating the Americans with Disabilities Act. The exercise connected objects in the Smithsonian collection to the civil rights law. The experience for his students was “really incredible,” he said.

Each year, he’s heard students say they want to get a job in the federal government or work at the Smithsonian after graduation. But not this year. Redman said he hasn’t heard a single student express interest.

“This is a pressing concern, no doubt about it,” he said.

——

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


What to know about the National Museum of American History amid Trump review

BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAY
Sat, September 6, 2025 


The National Museum of American History plays a key role in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Smithsonian Institution over its perceived “wokeness.”

The White House mentioned the museum several times in its list of Smithsonian objections it published in August. Its items and exhibits will be reviewed as part of Trump's effort to get the Smithsonian to "celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions."

USA TODAY visited the museum, along with four others, to assess the administration’s concerns and get visitors’ perspectives.

In depth: Trump says the Smithsonian is too woke. We visited five of its museums to find out

Here’s what to know about the National Museum of American History:
The museum's origins

The museum opened to the public in 1964 as the National Museum of History and Technology, adopting its current name in 1980. It was the sixth Smithsonian building on the National Mall, according to the museum.

The building, which spans nearly 800,000 square feet, is a national historic landmark. It's one of the most visited Smithsonian museums, with 2.1 million visits in 2024.
What we found

The White House’s list of objections includes numerous complaints about the museum, including a sculpture based on the Statue of Liberty that depicts her holding tomatoes instead of a torch and tablet, and a Title IX exhibit that references ongoing civil rights battles as “transgender, nonbinary and cisgender female athletes demand equality.”

Immokalee Statue of Liberty by Kat Rodriguez is seen on display at the National Museum of American History.

Some of the items on the White House list, however, aren’t part of the museum’s current collections. Its “Upending 1620” exhibit, which the White House said portrays pilgrims as colonizers, was closed in September 2022.


The National Museum of the American Latino hasn’t yet been built, and a Latino history exhibit with several items Trump objected to closed in July.

The White House also said a section about demonstrations in the museum’s "American Democracy” exhibit “includes only leftist causes.”

While the majority of signs at the display may be considered progressive by some conservatives, the display also featured signs saying “Stop Abortion Now” and "Secure Our Borders Now.”

A looped History Channel segment on a TV situated among the signs also showed Second Amendment and tea party marches, as well as those supporting issues such as gun control and marriage equality.


As the museum’s offerings show, politics reach all corners of American life.

The “Entertainment Nation” exhibit, for example, features a “Los Suns” jersey that the Phoenix Suns wore to protest a controversial Arizona immigration law in 2010. The “Food: Transforming the American Table” exhibit notes that supermarkets “became symbols of the superior living standards made possible by the American capitalist system” during the Cold War.
What visitors said

Sammy Houdaigui, 22, said it's hard to leave the museum and “not feel pretty patriotic.”

He finds the museum to have a “pretty generous portrayal” of the country.

“It's kooky to me when I hear people say like, ‘oh, this museum is woke,’” he said. “It’s most certainly not.”

Trump’s effort to influence how the Smithsonian portrays American history is a far cry from how other countries handle their histories, said 78-year-old Lorraine Miles.

She was born in Germany, where she said Holocaust history is “crammed down their throats” to prevent the horrors of history from repeating.

She was joined by 72-year-old Robin Bowles and said both are “concerned” by the prospect of Trump reshaping the museum in light of his belief that “everything discussed is how horrible our country is.”

“That’s the funny thing,” Bowles said. “I don’t see it as being negative. I see it as being honest.”

But David Layman, who said he’s around 70 years old and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the museum “could go more positive.”

That said, he didn’t take issue with how Trump’s impeachments were presented in “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden” despite his feeling that they were politically motivated and “absolute nonsense.”

“I think there are a lot of legitimate complaints that he has,” Layman said. “I don’t know that that’s one of them.”

Kurt Kennedy, 74, said the museum provides a “different perspective” than the ones he was exposed to as a child. His childhood history lessons were “very biased toward the White perspective" and “glossed over” certain topics.

At the same time, he thinks it’s “fair to reevaluate ... how things are presented.”

“Problem is, the pendulum swings too far in each direction,” he said.

BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY.

USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: National Museum of American History amid Trump feud: What to know



What to know about the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery with Trump review underway

BrieAnna J. Frank and Chris Quintana, USA TODAY
Sat, September 6, 2025 

The National Portrait Gallery is among the first Smithsonian museums President Donald Trump’s administration is reviewing as part of an effort to eliminate “wokeness” in the country’s cultural institutions.

The White House mentioned the museum several times in its list of Smithsonian objections it published in August. Its items and exhibits will be reviewed so that they "celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions."

USA TODAY visited the museum, along with four others, to assess the administration’s concerns and get visitors’ perspectives.

Here’s what to know about the National Portrait Gallery:

The museum's origins

Congress passed legislation to establish the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1962.

The law calls for it to “function as a free public museum for the exhibition and study of portraiture and statuary depicting men and women who have made significant contributions to the history, development, and culture of the people of the United States and of the artists who created such portraiture and statuary.”

It houses a complete collection of presidential portraits – the only one in the country outside the White House, according to the museum. It started commissioning such portraits in the 1990s, starting with former President George H.W. Bush.

The building, which it also shares with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is a national historic landmark that dates back to 1836, when it was built for the U.S. Patent Office.

What we found visiting

The White House's list condemned a performance art series that took place in 2015 and 2016, an oil painting showing refugees crossing the U.S. border into Texas that hasn’t been displayed since 2023, an animation of Dr. Anthony Fauci not currently on display and a since-scrapped exhibit that was set to open in September and include a “painting depicting a transgender Statue of Liberty.”

The White House objected to the National Museum of American History’s portrayal of Benjamin Franklin, which it said "focuses almost solely on slavery,” though the National Portrait Gallery’s Franklin painting has no such references. It describes his “lifetime of achievement” and says he “remains highly visible today.”

The portrait museum has a dizzying array of galleries depicting everything from Old Hollywood to 17th-century Indigenous Americans. Its stated mission is to “tell the story of America by portraying the people who shape the nation’s history, development and culture.”

Indeed, among the museum's collection are portraits of the most iconic figures in American history – the unfinished portrait of George Washington that served as the foundation for the image now seen on the $1 bill and the “cracked plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln that the museum describes as “one of the most important and evocative photographs in American history.”

“The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibit that opened in November 2024 and is set to end in September, says visitors will “find different ways that artists use sculpture to tell fuller stories about how race and racism shape the ways we understand ourselves, our communities and the United States.”

One of its sculptures, Nari Ward’s “Swing,” shows a car tire with embedded shoes hanging from a noose. Its description says the piece references the “brutal history of lynching in the United States” and that the shoes represent “the countless lives lost to racial violence, in the past and in our present day.”

“Swing” by Nari Ward at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibit also says “American sculpture became a medium for expressing racist hierarchies” and that its pieces highlight sculpture’s “deep connections to notions of white supremacy and idealized white female virtue.”

In the “America’s Presidents” exhibit, the museum notes that neither Trump’s nor former President Joe Biden’s commissioned portraits have been unveiled.

Currently, a 2017 photograph by Matt McClain shows Trump, hands folded and wearing a red tie, looking directly at the visitor. At certain angles, the photo’s dark backdrop allows viewers to see the reflection of former President Barack Obama’s portrait that depicts him surrounded by greenery and flowers representing Chicago and Hawaii.

Biden is represented by a 2023 photograph taken at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco that shows him looking away from the camera as he stands behind a microphone.

A portrait of President Trump by Matt McClain is seen at the National Portrait Gallery as a portrait of former President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley is reflected in the glass.
What visitors said

Museum visitors said they did not feel like the museum was politically biased.

Ian Jayne, 29, said he appreciated the museum and didn’t think any of the exhibits were “woke.”

Jayne, a former Georgetown student now visiting from Oklahoma, said he hoped the Smithsonian would fight to maintain control over its exhibits.

“So much of American culture is about open expression,” he said.

Maya Ribault, 50, works near the National Portrait Gallery. She is a frequent guest and considers herself a bit of a superfan.

She said the museums do a great job of representing the nuance and diversity of America.

“If I could see the curators,” she said, “I’d give them a big hug.”

BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY.

USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: National Portrait Gallery: What to know amid Trump review


What to know about the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
Sat, September 6, 2025

WASHINGTON – The National Museum of African American History and Culture – which President Donald Trump once said made him “deeply proud” – has become a flashpoint in the White House's targeting of the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum was among a group of Smithsonian facilities named in Trump's executive order "restoring truth and sanity to American history." It was also one of several museums that is having its exhibits and programming examined as part of a White House review ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary next year.

Since its come under pressure from the Trump administration, the African American history museum's director has stepped down and its grounds have been the site of several large rallies, with hundreds of demonstrators demanding that the adminitration leave the museum alone.

In August, Trump said on social media that the Smithsonian focuses too much on “how bad slavery was” and not enough on “success.” As an example, the White House cited a controversial graphic released online by the African American history museum in 2020.

The graphic, which was part of the museum’s “Talking About Race” portal, described what it called “aspects and assumptions about white culture.” Following intense backlash from conservatives, the graphic was removed, and the museum issued an apology.

The White House’s recent characterizations of the museum stand in stark contrast to Trump's comments after he toured the facility in 2017 and hailed it as “a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes."

“This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,” he said at the time.

USA TODAY visited the museum, along with four others, to assess the administration’s concerns and get visitors’ perspectives.

Here's what to know:

When did the museum open?

The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on Sept. 24, 2016, to much fanfare.


The opening ceremony was full of pomp and circumstance, with reflective speeches and a slate of presidents, actors and celebrities in attendance.

President Barack Obama closed out the event and, speaking to a large crowd gathered outside the three-tiered building, said the museum reaffirms that "African American history ... is central to the American story."

U.S. President Donald Trump looks at an exhibit on slavery during the American revolution while visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, U.S., Feb. 21, 2017.

A museum a long time in the making

Congress and President George W. Bush authoritzed the contruction of the museum in 2003, following decades of requests and lobbying from advocates who wanted to see a museum in the nation's capital dedicated to the experience and history of African Americans.

Unusually, the museum had to build its collection from scratch. To do so, a Smithsonian team traveled across the country and held events in which thousands of ordinary people brought in antiques and heirlooms to donate. Many of the items that are highlighted in the museum's galleries – including Harriet Tubman's shawl and Nat Turner's Bible – were acquired this way.

Built on five acres of land a short walk from the Washington Monument, the facility is among the newest Smithsonian museums. It's a sprawling 10-story building holding about 105,000 square feet of exhibition space. In 2024, it hosted 1.6 million visitors.

A guard tower from Angola Prison stand in the background at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The prison, which was referred to as the “the bloodiest prison in the South,” originated on a plantation and cells were located on old slave quarters.

What's inside the National Museum of African American History?

The museum’s permanent galleries trace through six centuries of history in the Americas, from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the early 1500s to the election of President Barack Obama and beyond.

On the bottom floor, where the historical galleries begin, the mood is somber as visitors navigate dimly lit corridors, viewing renderings of Africans packed into slave ships and descriptions of the horrid conditions they faced in colonial North America.

The museum notes how African slaves worked alongside indentured servants from Europe before laws in the mid-1700s cemented a system of slavery based on African descent. These new laws, a video in the museum says, “created whiteness” and separated indentured Europeans from enslaved Africans.

A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in front of a wall emblazoned with the slaves he owned. The museum notes that Jefferson owned 609 slaves, including his own children.

At the beginning of a section on the Declaration of Independence stands a statue of Thomas Jefferson flanked by stacks of bricks, each emblazoned with the names of the slaves he owned.

“The tension between slavery and freedom – who belongs and who is excluded – resonates through the nation’s history and spurs the American people to wrestle constantly with building a ‘perfect union,’” text on a nearby wall reads. “This paradox was embedded in national institutions that are still vital today.”

As visitors ascend through decades of history, they can enter a segregation-era railway car, sit at a lunch counter protest and read about Civil Rights figures such as Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X. One room contains the casket of 14-year-old Emmett Till, the boy who was kidnapped and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a White woman.

Facing the rising sun, the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Jan. 13, 2017.

At the end of the historic galleries, where light begins pouring into the building, visitors move above ground and pass by a quote from poet and Civil Rights activist Langston Hughes

“I, too, am American,” it reads.

The top floors of the museum are dedicated to African American culture and the pivotal role Black Americans have played in everything from music and literature to technological advancements and the military.

Beaming with sunlight, these galleries feature shimmering pieces of memorabilia: Muhammad Ali’s headgear, Jackie Robinson’s jersey, one of Dinah Washington’s dresses and Chuck Berry's cherry red Cadillac Eldorado – a stark difference in tone from the exhibits below ground.

A red Cadillac Eldorado owned by Chuck Berry is seen on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Visitors describe museum as 'truthful' and 'all-encompassing'

Over a dozen people who visited the museum told USA TODAY it presents a clear-eyed telling of history that doesn’t sugar-coat the atrocities of slavery and segregation, but also provides plenty of examples of success, hope and prosperity.

“I think it’s very honest and truthful,” said Chris Bradshaw, 40, who visited the museum for the first time with his mother.

He took issue with Trump saying the Smithsonian focused too much on slavery. “It is literally the foundation of this country, and it’s the foundation of this museum,” Bradshaw said. “The prosperity is there – it’s just at the top.”

Eugene Lucas, 61, spent a few hours in the museum while on a family trip to attend an honoring ceremony for his cousin – a member of the rap trio Jungle Brothers – hosted by the National Hip-Hop Museum.

“It was all-encompassing,” he said of the galleries, including a section on the Harlem Hellfighters, a regiment of Black Army infantrymen in which his great-grandfather served.

“Changing any of this now would just be going back in time.”

The Orwellian Echoes in Trump’s Push for ‘Americanism’ at the Smithsonian

Laura Beers

 September 2, 2025

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Big Brother in Apple’s 1984 ad.

When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.

It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.

A screenshot of President Donald Trump’s Aug.19, 2025 Truth Social post about the Smithsonian.
Truth Social Donald Trump account

Winners write the history

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.

As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.

The Ministry of Truth

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.

But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.

Down the memory hole

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.

As part of efforts to purge references to gay people, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of gay rights advocate Harvey Milk’s name from a Navy ship.Screenshot, Military.com

Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life of Harriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.

Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”

Repressing thought

Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.

According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.

It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.

This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.

The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.