The Trump administration has intensified its campaign to rewrite how America tells its history, ordering federal agencies to remove exhibits and materials that emphasize slavery and racial injustice by Sept. 17.
Issued by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the directive has set off a wave of protests, most prominently in Philadelphia, and follows a recently published White House article slamming the Smithsonian Institution’s recounts of slavery, racism, and social justice in America, while painting the institution as “anti-American propaganda.”
“These steps are veiled attempts to rewrite and distort the narrative by removing any mention of the racist actions, words, and deeds that have shaped American history,” Karsonya “Kaye” Whitehead, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), said in a statement about the Aug. 21 directive. “This regime is actively seeking to erase the lived experiences of Black people.”
From D.C. to Pennsylvania: Executive Orders Paint False Narrative of ‘Divisive Agenda’
What started with claims that the Smithsonian Institution was being influenced by a “divisive, race-centered” agenda, resulting in a review of programming by Vice President JD Vance, is now an immediate danger to community leaders in Pennsylvania.
Similar to the March executive order that launched an executive campaign against the Smithsonian Institution, and particularly the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the Trump administration’s recent order has prompted a review of more than a dozen exhibits at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, vowing to remove any “inappropriate” content from the historic site by Wednesday, Sept. 17.
In the days leading up to the deadline, activists responded with a charge to defend the President’s House, an outdoor memorial, located steps away from Independence Hall, documenting the reality that George Washington enslaved nine people while serving as the nation’s first president.
“We reject any effort to remove the President’s House as this is a real story of America,” said the Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness, a Philadelphia pastor, during the Sept. 13 rally. “We are not afraid to challenge the removal of Black history; we have been blessed just four short blocks away. The strength that has survived in one spot as the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African-Americans anywhere in this country. We stand ready to be able to continue to tell the story.”
Since its establishment in 2010, the President’s House exhibit, formally titled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” has served as an educational tool for millions of visitors.
Multimedia displays and detailed accounts of individuals such as Ona Judge, who escaped to freedom, and panels such as “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” which describe the economics and human cost of bondage, are now targeted for removal under the administration’s order.
Many community leaders warn that the directive is designed to sanitize history rather than confront it, reflecting what historians and curators consider a direct attempt to censor scholarship and erase evidence of systemic racism.
“The first time enslaved Africans were brought here, it was a ripping away of their history, a taking away of their names and their culture,” said Jo Banner, co-founder of the Descendants Project in Louisiana, connecting the federal order to broader patterns of erasure. “If we want our own liberation, we have to own telling our true history.”
Activists in Philadelphia are pressing for urgent meetings with the National Park Service. They say the stakes are larger than a single site, representing a test of whether Americans will allow federal power to strip away the unvarnished truth of the nation’s past.
Alan Spears, senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, expressed similar concern.
“When you start to fiddle around with history, that isn’t what makes a country great. It makes us weaker. And it makes us meaner, because we’re going to be much less informed about the broad sweep of U.S. history, he said, “and all the people who have contributed to making this country a good country.”
An Ongoing Effort to Control the Historical Narrative
Federal agencies have worked to comply with Trump-led attacks on African American contributions.
Earlier this year, the National Park Service briefly altered its Underground Railroad webpage to minimize the role of Harriet Tubman before restoring it under public pressure. The Department of Defense removed, then reinstated, information about baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s military service and the Medal of Honor earned by Maj. Gen. Charles C. Rogers, one of the highest-ranking Black servicemembers in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the mural at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington was demolished in March, in what critics say was another symbolic effort to erase visible reminders of the struggle for racial justice.
Trump’s rhetoric has only sharpened.
In recent weeks, he referred to museums as remnants of a “woke country” that dwell on slavery and racial injustice rather than celebrating national achievements. At a White House event, he declared that Smithsonian institutions were filled with “divisive propaganda” and threatened to cut funding if changes were not made.
His remarks represented an about face from 2017, when he called his tour of NMAAHC “a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance, and hatred.”
Historians warn that the shift is part of a coordinated effort to control the country’s historical narrative.
Chad Williams, a professor at Boston University, compared the administration’s approach to the “Lost Cause” ideology promoted after the Civil War, when southern states sought to glorify the Confederacy while downplaying slavery as the cause of the conflict.
“It sends a very dangerous message about how the government is seeking to control this country’s narrative with a very narrow and propagandistic version of American history,” Williams told a local news outlet.
Attorney Michael Coard, representing the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, told attendees of the Sept. 13 rally that federal officials set the deadline after months of pressure from Trump and congressional allies.
After warning “this place could be shut down,” he outlined legal, political, and activist strategies to keep the memorial intact, adding the President’s House Steering Committee is starting to meet with category groups, such as a historian committee, an architect committee, an educators committee and an activist committee, according to The Philadelphia Tribune.
“These are different allies who are going to come together,” said Coard, one of multiple leaders of the steering committee.
With pending directives rooted in cultural erasure, community leaders and activists in Philadelphia and across the nation note the importance of national collaboration to strife attempts to diminish the historic resilience of African Americans.
The president of ASALH, which founded Black History Month, is among those reminding folks that the battle is in the hands of the community, and the best way out is in memory of that foundation.
“Our history is both brutal and ugly and poignant and beautiful—from the forced arrival of our ancestors to these shores to the Black men who fought, to the work that was done during Black Lives Matter to reform community policing,” Whitehead said, after denouncing all efforts to “erase or destroy our history, silence our voices, and minimize our story.”
“These are our stories and our stories, both individual and collective, matter,” she continued. “Our voices and our sacrifices matter.”
Racism is as racism does.