The all-out effort to ensure that educational and cultural institutions align with the president’s distorted and propagandized vision of American history and culture–as opposed to American history and culture itself– is not limited to strongarming and shaking down universities, sanitizing exhibits at various Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, and scrubbing government websites. This month, for instance, working through the Interior Department, the administration is planning to remove factual, but in its view negative displays and signs at national parks and monuments. “The Interior Department plans to remove or cover up all “inappropriate content” at national parks and sites by Sept. 17 and is asking the park visitors to report any “negative” information about past or living Americans, according to internal documents,” reported The New York Times.
Targets for removal include explicit mentions of slavery and slaveholders, references to the struggles of gay and transgender Americans, and displays highlighting sea level rise and other documented climate impacts. One target for removal for example, is an exhibit on sea level rise and shore erosion at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina as part of understanding the ecology of barrier islands. Others on the chopping block include “exhibits discussing how the United States government imprisoned Native Americans” at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, as well as ones that name slaveholders and reference how slaves were whipped and punished at the Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana.
“The stories protected at our national parks bring us closer together as a country, not further apart,” said Alan Spears, National Parks Conservation Association senior director for Cultural Resources. “Our history is complex and as national park advocates, we trust national park staff to navigate those complexities and do their jobs without interference. Great countries don’t hide from or sanitize their history. Great countries confront and commemorate their past, good parts and bad. Great countries learn and heal together. That is the work the Park Service helps us do. Anything less diminishes the service and sacrifice of previous generations who helped to make us who we are today.”
Taken as a whole, the American story–warts and all– is an inspiring one of making major progress toward realizing our founding ideals and achieving the full promise of our nation, despite dizzying starts and stops, as well as occasional reversals. Telling it in full to the best of our abilities is what “we the people” need to be grounded in the reality essential to participating constructively and effectively as citizens in a democracy; it’s also what we deserve.
President Trump’s crass attempt to rewrite our history to better achieve his own political ends undermines the value and credibility of our great educational and cultural institutions, including our national parks and monuments. It does us all a disservice. I recognize it may take until he leaves office, but we cannot allow it to stand.
