*More than 30 objects, including Harriet Tubman’s hymnal, have been rotated out of the National Museum of African American History and Culture amid President Trump’s executive order targeting “divisive” racial exhibits.
In all, NBC News counted 32 artifacts that have disappeared from public view at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) just weeks after Trump signed a March 27 executive order demanding that the Smithsonian eliminate material that “divides Americans based on race.”
The White House insists it never leaned on curators. “The White House had no involvement in removing any exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Culture or any other Smithsonian institution. They did this on their own accord,” spokesperson Lindsey Halligan said. Museum officials likewise blamed routine rotations, listing 11 replacement objects, among them a photograph on mass incarceration and artwork memorializing Emmett Till.
According to NBC, a cloth woven by enslaved hands is gone, as is a first edition of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, and a photo of Public Enemy. As we reported earlier, a wave of support is building among Black faith leaders and civil rights advocates for the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) after Trump issued a controversial executive order that targets the Smithsonian Institution for allegedly promoting a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
Rep. Joseph Morelle joined colleagues Terri Sewell and Norma Torres in a letter decrying a “flagrant attempt to erase Black history,” while new legislation seeks to shield civil‑rights landmarks from political meddling. Historian Clarissa Myrick‑Harris of Morehouse College warned, “It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed.”
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A SPECIAL @NBCNews REPORT: At least 32 artifacts have been removed from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The WH and museum say the removals aren’t related to President Trump’s attacks on diversity. But many aren’t convinced. pic.twitter.com/uape94Q0bz
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 17, 2025
Personal Loans, Abrupt Returns
Liz Brazelton loaned the museum one of her great‑great‑grandfather’s diaries, a primary source for the Oscar‑winning film “12 Years a Slave.” She gave one of the diaries to the museum in September 2015 on a 10-year loan. In March, she received a notice that the book would be returned early “to coincide with our internal gallery rotation schedule,” two weeks before Trump’s directive.
“When I saw the executive order, I wondered if they maybe knew something was going to happen and they rotated it out early because it was about slavery, that entire exhibit,” Brazelton said, per NBC News.
Grassroots Pushback
Outrage has galvanized Black faith leaders. Rev. Robert Turner of Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple AME Church walked 43 miles to Washington and laid a wreath outside the museum. “If you don’t know the horrors that we went through, the hell, then you might not see the need for repairing,” he said. “It’s important for President Trump to know this issue of saving the Blacksonian and the issue of repairing America, and creating a culture of repair is very important to saving the soul of America.”
What Comes Next
The executive order charges Vice President J.D. Vance with a top‑to‑bottom review of Smithsonian content deemed to “degrade shared American values.” Its timing has fueled accusations of historical whitewashing.
“I was feeling that through this museum, America will see me, will see Black people,” said Rev. Amos C. Brown, a prominent pastor and civil rights leader. “We have been and are architects, designers of great things. … We took a negative and turned it into a positive, and telling the story of how people achieved great things in spite of oppression, in spite of those evil things that were done to us, that’s what that museum represents.”
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Black Churches Rally to Support African American History Museum Amid Trump’s Controversial Order
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