When a nation tells the truth about itself, it gives future generations the tools to do better. That is why the Smithsonian Institution and other museums that document the history and afterlives of slavery are not “out of control”—they are doing the hard, patriotic work of memory. Recent efforts by President Donald Trump to pressure the Smithsonian to deemphasize “how bad slavery was,” to reframe exhibits as less “divisive,” and to order a sweeping review of museum content are wrong on the facts and dangerous for our civic health.
What’s happening—and why it matters
In public statements and directives, President Trump and his team have targeted the Smithsonian’s approach to American history—complaining that museum displays dwell too much on slavery and other painful chapters and signaling plans for legal or administrative review of content across multiple museums. Reporting has documented a 120-day timetable for “revisions,” the demand to replace “divisive” language with “unifying” phrasing, and an explicit call to downplay the centrality of slavery to the American story. These moves echo broader attempts to substitute political messaging for professional historical practice.
The Smithsonian’s museums are federally funded but operate with scholarly independence for a reason: Americans deserve history that is researched, peer-reviewed, and responsibly interpreted—not history edited by politicians. Attempts to scrub, minimize, or euphemize the history of slavery do not “unify” the nation; they impoverish our understanding and make it harder to recognize patterns of harm that still shape our society.
What museums do right—every day
Across the United States there are 178 museums in 39 states that have spent decades building rigorous, empathetic, and deeply documented exhibitions that help visitors grasp the human reality of slavery and its legacies:
National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Smithsonian — The core exhibition Slavery and Freedom guides visitors from the transatlantic slave trade through resistance, abolition, and the long struggle for citizenship, using artifacts, oral histories, and scholarship vetted by leading historians. It doesn’t “dwell on the negative”; it teaches how people created culture, family, and freedom against the odds—truth and resilience, side by side.
The Legacy Museum & The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL — Built by the Equal Justice Initiative on the site of a former slave warehouse, the Legacy Museum uses documents, first-person narratives, and data-rich exhibits to connect slavery to convict leasing, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration, the companion memorial honors victims of racial terror. These are model institutions in evidence-based, immersive public history.
Whitney Plantation, Louisiana — Uniquely focused on the lives of enslaved people who worked the site, Whitney centers names, stories, and primary records. Its programs and memorials refuse plantation nostalgia and insist on historical accuracy as a form of respect.
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool (UK) — A global partner in telling the full story of the transatlantic trade and its legacies, with galleries and virtual tours that foreground the voices of the enslaved and confront modern slavery. American visitors learn how our history is woven into a wider Atlantic world.
This is not ideology; it is scholarship, collections, and pedagogy. It is the painstaking accumulation of evidence—ships’ logs and bills of sale, iron shackles and freedom papers, quilts and letters—curated to tell the truth humanely.
Why minimizing slavery’s history harms everyone
It weakens civic literacy. You cannot understand the Constitution’s compromises, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement, or contemporary racial disparities without understanding slavery. Diluting that history makes students and voters less informed and more susceptible to demagoguery.
It disrespects descendants and survivors. Families whose ancestors were enslaved have safeguarded stories and artifacts for generations. Asking museums to “soften” those truths tells communities their pain is inconvenient.
It erodes institutional trust. When politicians dictate exhibit language, museums stop being credible educators and start looking like billboards. Public trust—earned over decades—can be lost quickly.
It stifles American greatness. Facing hard history is not anti-American; it is the very source of our strength. The United States is at its best when it names injustice and mobilizes to correct it. The arc doesn’t bend toward justice by itself; honest history is one of the hands that bends it.
The stakes for the Smithsonian—and for us
The Smithsonian belongs to the American people. Its Secretary, curators, educators, and conservators are stewards of a national memory that must include the brilliance of American achievement and the brutality that also shaped it. Attempts to re-script exhibits to avoid “negative parts” of our past—especially slavery—do not make us prouder; they make us more fragile. And fragility cannot support a democracy.
If anything, the Smithsonian and its partners should be empowered to do more: expand community-sourced archives, fund descendant-driven research, deepen digital access to collections, and connect slavery’s history to the present with clarity and care. That is the path to unity—truth, reckoned with together.
A final word
Black history is American history. Defending its honest presentation is not a partisan project; it is a patriotic obligation. Museums that tell the full story are not tearing the country down—they are building the foundation on which a better country can stand.
Yes, I’m passionate about being an American, and about my Black heritage. I’m passionate about my children and their children and their children’s children knowing from whence they came…to be informed by it and inspired by it. But they can’t be either just knowing only half of the story. They need to know the good and the part that is embarrassing for the country. By doing so they become wholly complete citizens and productive contributors of this country and the world.
I’ve said it before and I reconfirm now, let society protect and preserve and honor and share the sacred lived experiences and contributions of all who made their way to this country.
I remain…in defense of Black museums.
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