A century ago, Carter G. Woodson created what was then called “Negro History Week,” which expanded to Black History Month, because the United States refused to tell the truth about itself. Woodson understood something that remains true today: when a government lies about or seeks to hide its country’s past, it protects power, not people.
That is what makes this current moment so dangerous — and so revealing. At the same time Black History Month reaches its centennial, the federal government, spearheaded by President Trump, is actively engaged in attempts at erasing Black history, not through ignorance or neglect, but through policy, pressure, and deliberate design.
Redefining U.S. history
This is not a cultural debate. It is not a disagreement over policy as much as it is a disagreement over humanity. The willful disregard and erasure of the Black experience is the state asserting control over memory — dictating which histories are acceptable, and which are too threatening for their narrative to the public.
Under the Trump administration, federal power has been used to redefine racism out of existence. Executive orders, agency guidance, and political appointments have pushed the idea that systemic racism is a myth, that the ills of chattel slavery and its legacy are exaggerated, and that any effort to name inequality is itself discriminatory.
Federal agencies have been instructed to avoid language about systemic racism. Training materials are scrubbed of references to white supremacy. Discussions of slavery are softened, reframed, or reduced to unfortunate footnotes rather than foundational truths. History is not being debated, it is being diluted until it becomes meaningless.
Dismantling DEI
The administration’s assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs is the clearest example of this strategy. DEI is often dismissed as corporate jargon, but in practice, it is one of the only remaining frameworks within federal institutions that acknowledges how racism operates structurally.
By dismantling DEI across federal agencies and pressuring federally funded institutions to follow suit, the administration is not creating neutrality, it is enforcing silence. When the federal government bans the language needed to describe injustice, it inversely bans the possibility of addressing it.
Canceling culture and art
This erasure extends beyond policy into culture. Federal pressure campaigns have targeted public art. Just this year, the President instructed the National Park Service to remove the slavery exhibit at the Independence Mall in Philadelphia. The exhibit had depicted the treatment of enslaved people by George Washington. In March of this past year, and via the executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” he directed the Smithsonian Institution and other federal cultural institutions to purge exhibits that “inappropriately disparage Americans” and to restore monuments or statues that had been removed on the grounds of “false reconstructions” of history.
The President also used state authority to censor or remove paintings and exhibits that confronted slavery, lynching, or state brutality, labeling those realities as ‘divisive’ or ‘political,’ while sanitized narratives of the past are treated as patriotic. For example, this year the 1863 image of a formerly enslaved man’s scarred back (known as The Scourged Back) was ordered to be removed in Georgia. All of this is done in tandem with the reinstatement of statues and memorials that had been removed or relocated — including Confederate monuments —under the guise of restoring “true” U.S. history.
History or his story
What the administration deems ‘keeping politics out of history’ is, in reality, the most political act of all: deciding which lives, stories, and struggles deserve permanence, and which are to be pushed aside. For example, the Trump administration recently removed portions of the home monument for Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers, including references to his Ku Klux Klan murderer as a racist, over the ‘divisiveness’ of the word.
In attempts to justify the reckless removal of Black history, the administration speaks to the concept of unity and how focusing on racism is divisive. However, when applying proper reflection, it is abundantly clear that the goal is not unity. The goal is comfort. And white comfort, historically, has always been prioritized over Black justice.
Anti-wokeness as policy
Black History Month was created precisely because the federal government refused to tell the truth. One hundred years later, the same refusal persists — only now it is cloaked in the language of neutrality, free speech, and anti-‘wokeness.’ Look no further than the Black History Month proclamation on February 3: the focus is not on the merits or importance of Black History Month, nor does it directly address blackness…it is a whitewashed version that ignores the myriad contributions to this country and the ability to move forward despite the horrors bestowed on the Black community.
This centennial should have been a moment of reckoning: an opportunity to expand what we teach, whom we honor, and how we confront the violence that built this nation. Instead, it has become a reminder of why Black History Month was necessary in the first place.
More examples of the need to honor Black history can be found in the recent racist post the President shared depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes, or the fact that this Black History Month, Maryland Governor Wes Moore was uninvited from the annual Governor’s Dinner.
Black History Month at 100 is not just a celebration. It is an indictment. After a century of scholarship, organizing, and sacrifice, the federal government still fears honest Black history — because history, when told truthfully, exposes abuses of power.
And abused power, when exposed, demands change. At year 100, we stand firmly committed to demanding that change, and ensuring that Black history be honored, not ignored.