00:00History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
00:11That line, from African American poet Maya Angelou, appears on the website of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
00:20Yet the very question of how to face history, and how it should be told in the first place, is now under review at Smithsonian Museums like it.
00:27With 21 museums and 14 research and education centers, the Smithsonian has been telling America's story for nearly 180 years.
00:37But now the White House wants to wrest control of the narrative, seeking so-called content corrections for materials it deems divisive.
00:45There's this section of an executive order seeking to, quote, remove improper ideology from Smithsonian properties.
00:52There's this list of displays and exhibits the White House deems objectionable, including this piece depicting migrants watching Independence Day fireworks.
01:01And there's a post from the president himself on his Truth Social platform, saying the Smithsonian is out of control.
01:07Where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was.
01:12Not everyone shares the administration's perspective, least of all these museum-goers.
01:17My opinion is slavery is real. If it happened, it happened. To remove it and say that it's divisive.
01:24We're sorry that it's divisive, but that wasn't our cause.
01:28And so to change things, to make it so that you have a narrative that's positive for you, is insane.
01:36Tell the truth. Deal with the truth. Let's work through the truth.
01:39I believe it is a rewriting of American history. History exists. The good and the bad exist. Things happen. Bad things happen. Good things happen. I love the country. Don't like everything that's happening right now.
01:53I just want to see the African-American art before Donald Trump messes up the place.
02:04What do you think he's going to do?
02:06I don't know. It seems like everything that involves African-American history, he wants to denigrate it, downplay it, like it doesn't matter.
02:21And it does matter. So we came all the way from New York before he changes every day or destroys it.
02:30As the White House engages in an ideological battle with the country's most preeminent museums, historian Martha Jones says it would take a lot more than executive orders to really shape American hearts and minds.
02:42We all know as Americans that slavery was a long, difficult, and regrettable chapter in our past.
02:53That understanding cannot be erased, even if it is stripped from museum walls or from the glass cases in a gallery.
03:05So it will be on us to individually and collectively honor that history, preserve that history, tell that history, and to indeed find new ways to make it visible for visitors, but also for next generations.
03:26Museums aren't just mere archive keepers. They're also reminders that what society has had to overcome in the past was once a present-day struggle.
03:36How Americans react to this current moment will, too, be part of the historical record someday.
03:40But how much that will appear at the Smithsonian, and in what way, that remains open.
Comments