“Who Controls the Past Controls the Future”

                                                                                        George Orwell, 1984

For 30 million visitors a year, the Smithsonian Institute’s free museums are a highlight of Washington, D.C. Established in 1846 with money willed to the U.S. by Englishman James Smithson for “an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men,” the first of 21 museum buildings (pictured) opened on the Mall in 1855. The Smithsonian is one of the world’s great museums and vividly illustrates the remarkable history of the United States. 

History is the record of what happened in the past, why, and the consequences, both good and bad. Historians study two kinds of evidence: primary (contemporary sources such as eyewitness accounts, recordings, documents, and artifacts) and secondary (analysis, modification, or interpretation of primary sources). Both kinds of evidence need to be carefully examined for biases, ideological agendas, unverified evidence, selective omissions, and other distortions. Done well, the result is a narrative—a story—that explains events and ideas within the context of the time as accurately as the evidence allows. 

History narratives can be books, lectures and discussions, specialized scholarly papers, school texts, audio and visual recordings, and descriptions of museum exhibits. Depending on the historian’s skill, they can be dry as dust or lively stories told with passion that place the topic within a larger, meaningful context.

Historians see the world through various lenses depending on their expertise and interests: political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, artistic. Fifty years ago and more, school texts tended to focus on political matters—wars, treaties, politicians—but important as these are, there has been a growing focus on social and economic issues and the condition of ordinary citizens, often called “history from the bottom up” rather than from the top down. The Smithsonian recently opened museums dedicated to the experience of African Americans and of the American Indian and plans two new museums about the American Latino and women in America. 

Now comes a president complaining on social media: “Museums all over the country are “the last remaining segment of “WOKE.” The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” 

Incorrect English aside, Mr. Trump writes as if he has never been in a Smithsonian museum or given serious thought to the vast evidence about the horrors of slavery and the subsequent evils of Jim Crow, redlining, lynching, and the ongoing resistance to voting rights. In fact, he toured the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2017, saying that it “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.” It seems his memory has faded since then. And his values.

He also seems unfamiliar with the thousands of exhibits describing American “Success” from the Wright brothers to moon landings, the Internet, and, since he longs for “Brightness,” Edison’s first light bulb. As to the “Future,” museums, like history, illuminate the past through evidence. There is no evidence about the future. 

Trump wants to whitewash history (pun intended), hiding our sins to invent a pseudohistory he thinks more inspiring. A free people deserve not propaganda, but the truth—the whole truth—from their museums, their schoolbooks, and their government. That is inspiring. 

Truthful history has been called “history, warts and all.” Award-winning author Peter Beagle offered one example: “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers—thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.” Surely the native Americans who were here when Balboa and Cortez arrived uninvited deserve both our sympathy and our respect in the American story.