American museums face pressure to downplay Black history

Brick by brick, beam by beam and shingle by shingle, a house where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others planned marches in support of Black voting rights in the Deep South has been trucked from Alabama to a museum near Detroit.

The intricate operation to move and preserve the Jackson Home and other artifacts from the Civil Rights era preceded President Donald Trump’s efforts to eradicate what he calls “divisive” and “race-centred ideologies,” and minimize the cultural and historical impact of race, racism and Black Americans. Trump’s purges have sought to remove all reference to diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government and workforce, and many private companies have followed suit.

The establishments that house some of the most important reminders of African American history — including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — have come under particular pressure.

The chief executive of the Henry Ford, the new location of the Jackson Home, insists the museum has no political agenda. “The Henry Ford’s work is focusing on good, factual public history,” Patricia Mooradian told The Associated Press. King was often at the home of Dr. Sullivan and Richie Jean Jackson in Selma, Alabama, during the pivotal years of the Civil Rights Movement in the early ‘60s. It was within the walls of the 3,000-square-foot (280-square-meter) bungalow that King and others strategized a series of peaceful marches from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, that helped usher in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Jawana Jackson told AP in 2023 that she decided to ask the Henry Ford - a history museum complex in Dearborn, Michigan — to relocate and preserve her parents’ house and its contents because she believes “ the house belonged to the world.”

The building was taken apart and carried the more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford, and archivists are digitizing and cataloging some 6,000 items contained within. They illustrate the movement’s efforts to seek equal rights despite the often violent response of angry mobs and the police.

“The fact that the Jackson family saved things for this long, even though they may have been out of date or old, they knew the significance of all the things that were in that home, and they saved them and preserved them,” Mooradian said. The second Trump administration has made it clear that viewing history through what it considers a “woke” or antiwhite lens will not be tolerated. The president has made specific moves to remove any reference to divisions over race, gender or sexuality in national institutions.

Last week, the Smithsonian Institution removed from an exhibit a reference to Trump’s two impeachments in 2019 and in 2021. The Democratic majority in the House voted each time for impeachment. The Republican-led Senate each time acquitted Trump. A Smithsonian spokesman said the exhibit eventually “will include all impeachments.” The US has withdrawn from the United Nation’s cultural agency because, according to the White House, UNESCO “supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November.” Trump also fired the Kennedy Center board and slashed funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

And the president issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that condemns the Smithsonian Institution - a vast complex of museums, galleries and a zoo - for what he calls its “widespread effort to rewrite history.” The Smithsonian includes the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centred ideology,” Trump wrote. “This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” Mooradian said she is saddened by the order.

Associated Press