Keith Q.D. recently took his daughter to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which a recent Trump executive order alludes to as an institution part of “a widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.” As Keith, a frequent NMAAHC visitor, explained to The Informer, the museum helps him continue a family tradition where elders give the youth authentic lessons in U.S. history. “My parents… were part of the Great Migration,” said Keith, a Bethesda, Maryland resident who declined to reveal his entire name. “They came in from the south due to Jim Crow oppression and they never let me forget how mean and nasty people were and that it could happen again.”
Four days after President Donald J. Trump announced his executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” Keith and his daughter entered a landmark that has a growing collection of artifacts and primary source documents related to the trials, tribulations, achievements and advancements of African Americans. Amid anxiety about changes likely coming to the museum, Keith said he wanted to see the lengths to which the second Trump administration would go in hiding the country’s racially turbulent history. “What happened before,” Keith said as he gave a run-down of his favorite exhibits.. “Things that could easily be forgotten such as the Green Book or Emmett Till, the Civil Rights Movement… the history of the transatlantic slave trade…to see how wicked slavery and Jim Crow were, and the progress on how Blacks came from all that.” A Historic Landmark, Now Under Siege NMAAHC, the world’s largest museum dedicated to African-American history and culture, opened in 2016 during a week-long celebration headlined by then-President Barack Obama. As the Smithsonian Institution’s second-most visited museum, and the eighth most visited museum in the U.S., NMAAHC represents the culmination of a decades-long campaign to create a federally-owned home for African-American history.Lonnie G. Bunch III served as the museum’s founding director. From 2005, shortly after the passage of legislation authored by Congressman John Lewis to launch NMAAHC, until 2019, when he became the Smithsonian Institution’s first Black secretary, Bunch oversaw collections, traveling exhibits, planning and building.
Kevin Young, who became the next permanent NMAAHC director in 2020, took a leave of absence on March 14, nearly two weeks before President Donald J. Trump announced the controversial executive order. Currently, NMAAHC has more than 40,000 artifacts in its possession, nearly 3,500 of which are on display. Patrons often start at the bottom of the museum, an environment reminiscent of the Middle Passage. During what’s estimated to be a three-to-six hour trip through the museum, they peruse through African-American and Diasporic Black history spanning more than 400 years. Exhibits of note include: a letter by Haitian Revolution hero Toussaint L’Overture; a reassembled South Carolina slave cabin; items owned by Harriet Tubman; the desk of founding Chicago Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott; the dress Rosa Parks was sewing on the day she refused to give up her seat to a white man; Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves; a collection of hip-hop photographs; and the 2008 NBA Finals uniform of Kobe Bryant, NBA legend and founding NMAAHC donor. While a group of Pan-African organizers coalesced around a campaign for a full Kwanzaa exhibit, they haven’t found much success.
For Dr. Deborah LeBlanc, NMAAHC instills a sense of pride. So much so, that she’s made at least five visits since the museum opened. “Each time I come, I always go away with a little bit more information about my history,” LeBlanc told The Informer on the afternoon of March 31. LeBlanc, an educator, entrepreneur and civic leader from Southern California, made her latest visit to NMAAHC while in town for a conference hosted by the American Society for Public Administration, where she was scheduled to conduct a presentation about cybersecurity. She said this particular excursion to the museum, in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement, struck a bit differently. “It’s a real disservice,” LeBlanc said. “Because this history is real, and I think that [the Trump executive order] plays into the alternative truth narrative by taking it away.”
For more than an hour, LeBlanc, like other patrons, made her way through NMAAHC, which she said sparked thoughts, not only about her ancestry, but a recent trip she said affirmed the uniqueness of the African-American experience. “I really like the part about the transatlantic slave trade, and how it showed which parts of Africa the majority of Africans came from, and where they took them,” LeBlanc said. “It’s even more significant to me, because I am literally just coming in last night from a 22-day cruise from Barcelona across the Atlantic [where] I got a chance to really connect with the whole journey.” Since its inception, NMAAHC, in addition to preserving Black history, has served as ground zero for culturally affirming and historically relevant programming. For instance, Teaching for Change hosted, as part of its Zinn Education Project, a two-day institute at the museum in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education. Other projects, including those centered on early childhood education and D.C.-area Reconstruction Era history, have allowed the local nonprofit to interact with exhibits at NMAAHC while providing a platform for contemporary scholars, like Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum and Dr. Kate Masur, the latter of whom authored “Freedom Was in Sight! A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington D.C. Region.” During her most recent visit to NMAAHC, Teaching for Change executive director Deborah Menkart brought along two colleagues. She called the recent Trump executive order a threat to the very work that her organization has done for 35 years.
“We’re going to need to defend not only teaching truthfully about U.S. history in pre-K through 12th grade, but also [in] museums that help teach that history to people from all over the world who come to visit Washington, D.C.,” Menkart told The Informer. “The future of this country depends on what people understand about history. If they don’t understand that history, then it’s so much easier for them to [embrace the] divide-and-conquer politics of our current administration.” Menkart then looked at the bigger picture as she spoke about the Smithsonian Institution.“When people do [understand],” she explained, “they recognize the importance of solidarity and that the majority of people benefit from understanding the history that’s represented here at…all the museums here that are operated by the Smithsonian.” A Local Teacher Gives a Clarion CallThe group of museums, and education and research centers known as the Smithsonian Institution came into existence in 1846. There are more than 21 museums, 21 libraries, 14 education and research centers, and a zoo, along with a bevy of other landmarks — most of which are free to the public. Unbeknownst to some patrons, the Smithsonian Institution also has a presence in Anacostia, as well as Maryland, Virginia and Puerto Rico. A Fairfax County, Virginia public school teacher who asked to be identified as Melinda told The Informer that, though she’s long appreciated the wealth of knowledge at her fingertips, she doesn’t have much of an appetite for the nation’s capital these days. “I don’t even like to come to the District currently because of who’s sitting in the White House,” Melinda said as she reflected on her longtime proximity to political power. “People that live here, you know, we take it for granted, so when we come out of the suburbs, you know, it’s special.”On March 31, Melinda walked through NMAAHC, where she enjoyed African-American cuisine after looking at cherry blossoms. As the nation continues to reel from the policies of the second Trump administration, Melinda has one message for those living in the D.C. metropolitan area. “Our history is important, so everyone should be here,” Melinda said. “I tell all my students all the time, ‘Please come and know that you come from great people.’”
Source: Washington Informer
