The Trump administration is wasting no time purging key pieces of Black history.
According to journalist April Ryan of Black Press USA, Trump’s team has begun removing exhibits from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., including the original Woolworth’s lunch counter from the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, a pivotal Civil Rights Movement symbol.
The counter and its surrounding exhibit honored the bravery of four Black students from North Carolina A&T University — Ezelle Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, David Richmond, and Joseph McNeil — who took a stand against segregation by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter.
Their actions sparked a wave of similar protests across the South and became a turning point in the fight for racial equality.
North Carolina Democratic Congresswoman and A&T alum Alma Adams said Trump can take the exhibits down, but the people will never forget.
“This president is a master of distraction and is destroying what it took 250 years to build. Here’s another distraction in his quest for attention. Another failure of his first 100 days,” she said.
“We are long past the time when you can erase history—anyone’s history. You can take down exhibits, close buildings, shut down websites, ban books, and attempt to alter history, but we are long past that point. We will never forget!” she added.
Trump criticized the museum, often referred to as the “Blacksonian”, after signing an executive order targeting national parks and museums.
“Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn, not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” he told USA Today.
His views are backed by attorney Lindsey Halligan, who, per Black Enterprise, has been tasked with eliminating what she described as “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums.
“I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history. We don’t need to overemphasize the negative to teach people that certain aspects of our nation’s history may have been bad,” Halligan previously said.
“That overemphasis, she argued, “just makes us grow further and further apart.”
The original Woolworth’s lunch counter isn’t the only artifact being purged from the museum.
Ryan also obtained a letter from long-standing civil rights leader and pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church Dr. Amos Brown notifying him that two artifacts he loaned to the museum— his personal Bible and a rare copy of George W. Williams’ History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880 — are being returned.
The items have been on display since the museum’s opening in September 2016.
Dr. Brown, who is a close associate of historical figures like Medgar Evers and John Lewis, said the items have sentimental value as the Bible once belonged to his father.
“That book [History of the Negro Race in America] inspired me before there were even African studies published. In my home, in that 3rd Street Baptist Church, we studied that book,” he said.
“The Bible—that’s my father’s Bible and the Bible I used in the Civil Rights Movement. When we went on demonstrations, we always had the Bible.”
The National Museum of African American History and Culture has been a crucial place for sharing the full, unfiltered story of Black America.
The decision to start pulling major exhibits raises real concerns about how the nation’s memory and public education could change under Trump’s second term.
With historians and activists already sounding the alarm, there are growing questions about just how deep this cultural rollback will go and what pieces of our history will be left standing.
