By Ruth A. Sheets
Last Tuesday’s column by Heather Cox Richardson on Substack was difficult to read because it presented many false claims about the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History (NMAH), stated by Trump and his minions. I worked 4 years at the Smithsonian, and found it to be a remarkable place, fairly trying to present an honest overview of our past. I served as a volunteer weekend docent at the Museum of Natural History. I guess Trumplandia hasn't gotten to that museum yet; they describe evolution there! (OMG! How can they stand knowing the truth! Oh wait, they can’t!)
It is clear the truth about American history is not what Trumplandia, in its ignorance and fear of reality wish to know. If NMAH were telling the full truth about White America, and had enough space to do it, those whiny white boys and girls of Trumplandia would learn of some real horrors.
- the tortures and murders committed from the beginning, against Native peoples because white men wanted their land and shaped the law to do whatever they could to get it, even driving whole communities from their land and holding massacres regularly.
- The museum would show enslavement as a business proposition with torture chambers for any enslaved persons who didn't do exactly as their "masters/owners demanded, including amputations, beatings, and tortures that my brain just can't contemplate and my fingers can’t type here.
- It would show the massive rapes committed by white men on enslaved women, Native women, and nearly any other women white men could get hold of without being accused of rape, even their own wives.
- The museum would show the white male use of religion as a cudgel against women and poor folks to make them believe that being treated like slaves, like dirt or ignored altogether was god's will and tolerating it would get them into Heaven, along with their abusers, of course.
- They would see how the people of Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and other locations were beaten into submission and white men put in charge of those people's lives. Now Cuba is being blamed for American unrest? Are you kidding me!
- No, the United States was not where the beginnings of the end of slavery happened; it was Britain, then Spain. Brazil kept enslavement after us, but we only had it "officially" dumped after a horrific war led by white men, half of whom thought slavery was god's will and doing massive harm to Black and Native people somehow drove out their savagery or something. Whitelandia still can’t all agree that people of color are worthy American citizens.
- The museum would have the myriad of inventions by Black Americans, examples of the architecture designed and build by Black Americans, the foods that came from the creativity of Black women trying to figure out how to use everything they could to survive. There would be the evidence that often white men claimed those inventions and innovations as their own. It would also show the effective Native farmers’ use of the land in contrast to the ways white farmers along with drought caused the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
Some of this information is in the Museum of African-American History and the Museum of the American Indian. I am guessing the Museum of American History for Trumplandia is supposed to be the white male museum. Well, white male American history is incomplete, violent, sometimes has some courage, some invention, some creativity, but a whole lot of violence and dismissal of everyone who is not rich, white, and male, pretending that white men did everything by themselves; of course, they didn't and the "supporters" were not just enslaved persons, handmaids, and apprentices. They were full actors in the history of America!
I thank Historian, Heather Cox Richardson for spotlighting this. It took a long time for me to read the disgusting lies being told about NMAH’s curator/director who knows far more about America's history then the entire Klan of Trumplandia combined. Then Republican Reps. Mace and Boebert had to prove their anti-woman Bonafides to please their master, Donald Trump. The writers of the ridiculous anti-Smithsonian report got all the buzzwords in: slavery, transgender, founders (about whom they know nothing), and demonstrated their racism, misogyny , xenophobia (all of which they protest the museum shows when it is they who exhibit them every day). These are trigger words for the ignorant MAGAs who want so badly to believe they are superior to everyone else when they are just mediocre whiny white people who have privilege but can't stand anyone else having anything.
Signs are being produced that will be posted outside the National Museum of American History. They will tell everyone to go to other museums to get “the truth.” I hope the employees and visitors to NMAH will look at those signs and be reminded of the utter ignorance, power-grubbing nature of those who forced them to be posted. I hope people will just laugh out loud when they see them. That might be the best way to handle this childish toddleresque sign-posting. JUST LAUGH OUT LOUD IN FRONT OF THOSE SIGNS, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!, EVERY DAY, then march right into the museum to learn about us, the American people!