Historical truths threatened by presidential executive orders

National Museum of African American History and Culture exhibits in Washington are under attack by the president. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

History is often written by the oppressors. Some would rephrase that to say history is written by the victors.

Reality, though, is not always what is captured in writings, exhibits and monuments that get erected.

What I learned in school was often from the white man’s point-of-view. It’s taken becoming an adult who still wants to learn to realize the history I was taught is not the full story.

The museums of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., are a wonderful place to immerse oneself in history. They are free to everyone—not just those who call the United States home.

“The Smithsonian Institution was established with funds from James Smithson (1765–1829), a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to found ‘at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge,’” the Smithsonian website says. “On Aug. 10, 1846, the U.S. Senate passed the act organizing the Smithsonian Institution, which was signed into law by President James K. Polk.”

Unfortunately, the contents of the museums are under attack by the current occupier of the Oval Office. In March, President Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

Part of the order said, “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”

Vice President JD Vance is in charge of overseeing this executive order. He is tasked with ensuring no money is spent on “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.” One has to wonder if he will recommend stopping the building of the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum, the two Smithsonian museums in the works.

Trump singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture—a place I first visited in January and went back to earlier this month with my mom. So much to learn. So many stories. So powerful. I could easily go back to learn even more. There is that much to absorb.

Trump is the one who wants to rewrite history, not the Smithsonian. He and others want to put that white, male spin on things. He is even contemplating resurrecting statues that have come down, like those from the Civil War era that herald slave owners.

“It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed, or that Jim Crow laws and segregation and racial violence against Black communities, Black families, Black individuals even occurred,” historian Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a professor at Morehouse College, the historically Black campus in Atlanta, told the Associated Press.

Race has divided us for centuries—longer than this country has had its independence. We are still divided in so many ways. Rewriting history is not the way to unite us. Education, understanding, the truth—that’s what will make us whole as individuals, as a country, and even as a world.

This country was built on the backs of people of color. As the African American museum points out: “Enslaved African Americans, leased out by their slave owners, mined sandstone from local quarries and built the United States Capitol, the White House, and the Smithsonian Castle. Congress, the institution that guarded the people’s freedom, held sessions in a building constructed by forced labor. Americans witnessed the daily march of shackled slaves sold south in the capital city.”

It’s time we took our collective boots off their necks, and those of all marginalized communities.