When the National Museum of African American History & Culture opened in Washington, DC, in 2016, a friend and I received coveted tickets to be among the first visitors. The collection is large, and the tour was emotionally grueling, much of it concerning the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and the Civil War fought to rid the country of that peculiar institution.
The first Smithsonian museum dedicated to Black history, it does not shy away from depicting America’s racial past, from its earliest years through the aftermath of the Civil War—including Jim Crow, race massacres, and public lynchings—through the heroism of the Civil Rights Movement, in which brave men and women were beaten, tear-gassed, and even killed as they advocated for Black Americans. The museum also highlighted positive achievements: As a country, we have made significant progress on race. Still, it’s evident in the headlines and an endless array of stats that we carry the legacy of the past with us into the present.
How Americans communicate Black history to ourselves, our children, and the world is now under intense scrutiny in Washington, where the Trump administration has announced plans to root out what it’s called a “divisive, race-centered ideology” within the Smithsonian Institution. White House aides have been tasked with a “comprehensive internal review” of several museums, including the one dedicated to Black history, with an aim of realignment with President Donald Trump’s “directive to celebrate American exceptionalism.”
What that means in practice is yet to be seen. But Trump has already said he wants Smithsonian exhibits to be less “woke,” which in his mind translates to discussions, in part, about “how bad Slavery was.” “We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums,” he posted this week on Truth Social.
It’s not wrong to want to honor the good. But Trump’s sentiment misses the point. Whether told in a book or a museum exhibit, truthful history cannot merely valorize goodness. It must tell the whole truth, preserving a clear and honest account of past events that can be passed down through the generations. If the Smithsonian museums are to be truthful, they will not deemphasize or obscure the hypocrisy exhibited by our founders and governing documents, nor the evil perpetrated against slaves, countless of whom prayed and petitioned God for deliverance. To celebrate the exceptionalism of the American Civil Rights Movement, a predominantly Christian and clergy-led project, requires telling the full story of the oppressive system these activists fought.
Sanitizing these displays will do more than distort the truth about America. It will also diminish the work of God in our history and discount the resilience of the people who put their hope in him. Theirs are examples we need in the work of justice still left for us to do.
The necessity of remembering history is clear throughout Scripture. After God delivers the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, he commands them to remember it weekly when they observe the Sabbath (Deut. 5:15). God does the same after the people cross the Jordan River, this time instructing Joshua to set up a memorial with stones that can serve as a reminder for future generations (Josh. 4). And in the New Testament, Paul tells Christians to remember the death of Christ until he comes (1 Cor. 11:23–26).
And it’s not only the good and encouraging history we’re to keep in mind. The Bible consistently records the sins of Israel and the early church, giving us an honest—and therefore often unflattering—record of human failures. Joshua recounts the sin of Peor while directing the Israelites to faithfulness (Josh. 22:17–18). Scripture tells us that Abaraham deceived (Gen. 20:2), Jacob and Esau had a bitter rivalry (27:41), the nation of Israel fell into idolatry (Isa. 2:8), and David committed murder (2 Sam. 11). Examples continue to stack up in the New Testament, which records the disciples deserting Jesus at his moment of need (Mark 14:50), Ananias and Sapphira lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3), and both Paul and Jesus rebuking a fractious church (1 Cor. 3; Rev. 2–3).
Given the facts of our country’s history, it’s impossible to have a truthful African American museum that tells a purely positive story. Any effort to remake the Smithsonian in that direction would reveal a level of pride and nationalistic idolatry that’s resistant to the truth, Justin Giboney, the president of the Christian civic organization the And Campaign, told me in an interview.
This kind of falsehood will have real consequences: To refuse to look “at the flaws of our history separates us from one another,” said theologian Darrell Bock. “It prolongs our conflict” and “says you and your story do not matter to me simply because it comes from a different place than my story and challenges me to see the world differently. This erasure is not only of an account of history but of a people. It makes our neighbor invisible.”
But while Christians should be wary of efforts to diminish or sanitize history, that does not mean blind loyalty to the Smithsonian (or any other imperfect human institution). As remarkable as the African American history museum is, it has not been above reproach.
In an online portal intended to serve as an educational guide for conversations about race, the museum in 2020 posted a chart explaining what it called the different “aspects & assumptions of whiteness & white culture in the United States.” Bizarrely, the chart cited “polite” communication, “hard work” and “objective, rational linear thinking” as aspects of white culture. It alienated Black Americans from biblical principles and the Christian tradition—wrongly saying, for example, that the nuclear family and Christianity (which arrived in Africa long before European colonists did) were merely aspects of the dominant US culture that ethnic minorities had “internalized.” After backlash, the museum apologized.
Situations like that “show how the left kind of launders its agenda into what is considered ‘Black history’ and what are ‘Black issues,’” Giboney told me. “So I think there’s something there” to be critiqued, he added, “but not in any way that justifies what Trump seems to be trying to do.”
Daniel K. Williams, a Christian historian who teaches at Ashland University, said the move to inspect the Smithsonian—which comes in the aftermath of national debates about racial justice and things like critical race theory—is the first time a president has been directly involved in the communication of American history. However, there are some similarities between this moment and debates in the 1990s over national education standards. At the time, Williams said, many conservatives were unhappy that a number of universities dropped courses on Western civilization and replaced them with ones on world civilization. There was also some pushback when history courses gave more attention to marginalized groups, including African Americans.
“What conservatives said at the time was that they wanted to preserve a place for celebrating the achievements they thought had made America unique,” Williams told me. “The question was ‘Is there something exceptional about America? If so, what is it? And how do we teach it?’”
Three decades later, these debates have returned, this time pushed by a ham-fisted administration fixated on what it calls “Americanism.” And so far, the results have been disturbing. Two weeks before Trump complained about the Smithsonian’s focus on slavery, his administration said it would restore two statues commemorating Confederate figures. Earlier this summer, Trump said he wants Army bases to bring back Confederate names ditched in recent years. On Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the US, his only comment about the holiday came in a Truth Social post, where he complained that there were too many “non-working holidays” in America. Taken together, these comments suggest an understanding of race in America as one-sided and ill-informed.
Passing on stories about our country’s sins and failures doesn’t mean we treat America as an eternally unsalvageable mess. Truthful accounts of the past not only demonstrate the resilience of African Americans but also speak to the strength of the American people and what the country can be.
“We want America to be great,” said Quonekuia Day, a professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. “But we want it to be great for all people.”
Haleluya Hadero is the Black church editor at Christianity Today.
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