“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
—George Orwell, 1984
Donald Trump is doing his best to control the past, and he is doing it with stunning clumsiness. The White House put out an executive order on March 27 with the Orwellian title “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
Among other claims, the order contends that “[o]ver the past decade,” America’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Federal institutions are encouraged to purge historical characterizations of negative references. The order focuses on the Smithsonian Institution, which it charges with “improper ideology.” Vice President Vance, one of the 17 members of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, is tasked with toning it all down. And the Office of Management and Budget is charged with prohibiting future appropriations that stray from this hard line.
As an illustration of improper ideology, the order specifically mentions a current exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture.” The exhibit, according to the order, represents that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”
What an affront to America’s glorious past: claiming that race has been used to “maintain power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”
One agency after another has fallen into line. An investigation by The Washington Post found that “edits on dozens of pages since Trump’s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past. Some were edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages, statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as were references to present-day echoes of racial division.”
The way this all works is that staffers at agencies, including the Defense Department and the Department of the Interior, compile lists of websites and then, perhaps using AI, comb through them for possibly ideologically incorrect phrases. Other staffers then scrub the sites and substitute pathetically anodyne language. Pure Orwell.
The Post reported that the National Park Service bowdlerized its own web page on the Underground Railroad to remove a prominent photo of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. In its place was Orwellian language characterizing the Underground Railroad as a splendid example of Black-white cooperation. The outcry was so great that the photo and reference to Tubman were restored.
There are actually two museums honoring Tubman operated by the National Park Service, one at her home in upstate New York, as well as a Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Maryland, as well as more than eight hundred separate sites marking actual locations along the Underground Railroad.
This history happened. How do you expunge that?
MUSEUMS HAVE BEEN SUBJECT to a host of cuts from Trump’s destruction of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, part of his general war on culture and learning. But what Trump has done with the Smithsonian in particular is to expand his war on diversity, equity, and inclusion into a general effort to erase the realities of the Black experience in America since slavery.
A prime Trump target is the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened on the National Mall in September 2016, as part of the Smithsonian. It is one of the most moving museums you will ever see, focused on the survival and triumph and dignity of a subjugated people, against impossible odds. It was not even two generations from the abolition of slavery to the Harlem Renaissance, which produced some of the 20th century’s greatest poetry, art, and literature, and just another generation until Dr. King and the Second Reconstruction.
The museum’s exhibits are rendered with joy and wit, as well as sorrow and anger. They celebrate Black culture in all of its forms, as well as the struggle for Black liberation. It is impossible to tone down the museum or the historical reality, any more than the Holocaust Museum could function if its leaders were instructed to prettify the facts of Hitler’s murder of European Jews.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture was literally a century in the making. In 1915, on the 50th anniversary of the original Union victory parade of 1865 (which had excluded Black soldiers), black Union veterans were allowed to participate. The Black veterans group evolved into the National Memorial Association, which lobbied Congress to authorize the construction of a Negro Memorial.
For decades, resolutions were introduced in Congress, but nothing came of it. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the assassination of Dr. King, legislation authorized the construction of a national African American museum as part of the Smithsonian, but it was never funded. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) regularly used his power to block it.
Finally in 2003, Congress committed half of the $500 million needed to pay for the design and construction of the building and the exhibitions, all under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institution. The balance, $250 million, had to be raised from nonfederal sources. Staff salaries and operations expenses are paid by the Smithsonian. The legislation creating the museum was signed by President George W. Bush.
The museum’s founding director, Lonnie Bunch III, was elevated in 2019 to secretary of the Smithsonian. In 2017, Trump, who had sought Black support in the 2016 election, toured the new museum and was effusive in his praise.
“This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes—heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Greensboro students, and the African American Medal of Honor recipients, among so many other really incredible heroes,” Trump said, adding, “I am very, very proud of Lonnie Bunch.”
But that was then. Bunch made a comment in his 2019 memoir, A Fool’s Errand, that was critical of Trump. And since then, he has been on Trump’s personal vengeance list.
In his new role, Bunch was pressured into closing the Smithsonian’s own office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This followed Trump’s January order requiring all federal institutions to end DEI programs.
The Smithsonian is not technically a federal agency. It’s a public-private entity with an independent board, well insulated from political meddling. But the White House could try to starve it into submission. About 53 percent of the Smithsonian’s total budget is paid by federal appropriations.
The Smithsonian joins a long list of worthy public entities that are on the verge of being destroyed by massive budget cuts. The list, insanely, includes the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, lifesaving programs under USAID, veterans’ health, and countless others.
All require heroic struggles to preserve and defend. But there is something uniquely sinister in Trump’s efforts to expunge the history of slavery and segregation by censoring and starving museums.
Fully funding the Smithsonian is the responsibility of the Republican Congress. Ordering Trump to spend all the money that Congress appropriates is the responsibility of the Supreme Court.
Trump’s Orwellian actions are shameful. The actions, or inactions, of those who know better are even more shameful. This is how pure evil triumphs.