By April Ryan
“Black people are not going to stand for this,” says Nikole Hannah Jones, the author of the 1619 Project. She is responding to reports that President Trump is targeting the slavery section of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. The museum’s slavery facts and substantiating artifacts of the 250 years of the enslavement of Africans in America, curated by historians, are the bull’s-eye for the Trump administration. “I think that this is a sign of a deep sickness to think that you could go to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture and feel the need to erase how Black people got here,” emphasized Jones, who added, “To erase or minimize the slavery and freedom part of that story is to create a fantasy of how we got here. We literally would not be in the United States without slavery.”
According to sources, Smithsonian officials are secretly strategizing to stave off presidential actions for Republican support to preserve the history. Smithsonian officials hope once they have secured Republican support, they can present the attempt to save the artifacts and museum integrity to President Trump. In its lower portion, the museum takes tourists on a historic timeline journey from American slavery to Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement with the casket of Emmett Till, and simulations of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, among other noted moments in American history. “We cannot be a free democratic society when you have the most powerful people in the world who will take control of a history museum and force them to tell a lie,” said a distraught Jones, who has been tracking the museum’s movements more closely since its director Kevin Young left his post last week after four years on the job. Over a million people visited the museum in 2022, making it the second-most toured Smithsonian Museum.
Courtesy of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (website image)
President George W. Bush signed H.R. 3491, the National Museum of African-American Act, in December 2023, authorizing the creation of a Smithsonian Institution Museum African-Americans legacy of Africa. The first Black president, Democrat Barack Obama, opened the museum in September 2016. Meanwhile, The Republican “Golden Age” President Donald Trump is focused on whitewashing historical and proven facts about African-Americans, calling it “ideologically unacceptable.” Recently, presidential directives for the National Park Service have removed references to Underground Tubman from the Unse phrase “Black/White Cooperation.” Harriet Tubman’s picture was prominent as she was the most famous Underground Railroad conductor. The website’s face now features commemorative stamps of various civil rights leaders and text including “Black/White Cooperation.” Jones was emphatic that “this is the sign of people who are deeply insecure and untruthful and want to erase the very foundations of this country.”
