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History + The South
Erasing Us Twice? Trump’s War on Black History and Southern Truth
From slave cabins to resistance figures, the National Museum of African American History and Culture tells our Southern story. The President’s recent EO threatens to silence it — again.
In the heart of Washington D.C., stands the National Museum of African American History and Culture — a monument of truth — a place where the South’s painful, proud, and powerful past is preserved in plain sight.
Walk through its floors, and you’ll encounter a slave cabin from South Carolina, the Bible of Nat Turner, and the glass-topped casket of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old lynched in Mississippi. These aren’t abstract lessons — they’re tangible proof of what the South has endured, survived, and transformed. We’re talking sacred Southern artifacts.
And now, they’ve been labeled as “problematic” by a president who would rather restore Confederate statues than reckon with Southern Black truth.
The unfortunate reality is that we’ve been here before. After the Civil War, the South didn’t honor Black freedom — they erased it. Confederate monuments were built to replace Reconstruction with revisionism, to frame white supremacy as valor. Replacing truth with mythology was the first erasure. Calling the truth on display in institutions like the NMAAHC “divisive” is the second attempt.
The Stains Aren’t Coming Out
On Thursday, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order directs the Smithsonian Institution to remove exhibitions and educational materials deemed “improper, divisive, or anti-American.” At the top of the list? The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was singled out by name.
Following the Executive Order, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III sent a message to staff reaffirming the Institution’s commitment to scholarship and inclusive history. “We remain steadfast in our mission… free of partisanship… to help the American public better understand our nation’s history, challenges, and…
