The Battle Over Black History Month: Erasure vs. Memory

George Washington, America's most revered Founding Father, kept enslaved people at his Philadelphia presidential residence. To prevent them from gaining freedom under Pennsylvania law, he rotated them between Philadelphia and Mount Vernon, Virginia. This uncomfortable truth was displayed for 16 years in an exhibit called "The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation"—situated in the shadow of the Liberty Bell. In late January, federal workers removed the placards in response to a Trump administration executive order demanding that public monuments "focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people."

The timing couldn't be more pointed. As America observes Black History Month in February 2025, we're witnessing a fundamental clash over who gets to tell the nation's story.

Two Anniversaries, Two Americas

This milestone year marks both the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the 100th anniversary of what became Black History Month. One celebrates founding ideals; the other confronts failures to live up to them. Both offer essential opportunities to grapple with America's "grand and unfinished experiment."

Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in 1926 not as feel-good celebration, but as scholarly intervention. At a time when eugenics was finally being challenged as pseudoscience, Woodson argued that "the greatest scholars of today are saying that there is no such thing as race in science." But these truths, he warned, "will have little bearing on the uplift of the negro if they are left in the state of academic discussion."

From its inception, Black History Month was designed to tell the whole truth in public—not just the comfortable parts.

The Contradiction at the Heart of 2025

On February 3, President Trump issued his own Black History Month proclamation, declaring that "black history is not distinct from American history—rather, the history of Black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American story." Nice words. But his administration's actions tell a different story.

The same government celebrating Black heroes has been systematically erasing Black history from public spaces. Confederate monuments have been renamed. Memorials to Black military service members have been scrubbed. Works by authors like Maya Angelou have been purged from the U.S. Naval Academy library.

This isn't happening in a vacuum. State lawmakers across the country have limited what can be taught about race in public schools. Florida blocked Advanced Placement African American studies. Oklahoma banned discussions of collective racial responsibility. Teachers in one school were told to stop saying "Black excellence" to motivate students.

When Traditions Break

Indiana University at Indianapolis canceled its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Dinner last month—an event held without fail since 1969. The official reason? Budget cuts. The real reason? State law mandated the closure of DEI programs, cutting funding for the Black Student Union that helped organize the dinner.

After community outcry, the chancellor promised to "reimagine" the event. But traditions gain power through consistency. When they're interrupted, they lose their weight.

The Judge, the Order, and Orwell

On Monday, citing George Orwell's 1984, federal Judge Cynthia Rufe ordered the administration to restore the Washington exhibit placards. "The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate," she wrote. "An agency cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims."

A day later, Jesse Jackson died at age 84. The civil rights leader who challenged America's political imagination through two presidential campaigns had spoken to me in 2019 about where he drew hope after witnessing so much injustice. "The truth of slavery—that Africans subsidized America's wealth—that truth will not go away," he said.

The Real Stakes

This isn't really about Black History Month. It's about who controls the American narrative. The current administration wants a simple story: America as inherently great, with heroes who were inherently good. But complexity isn't the enemy of patriotism—it's the foundation of wisdom.

Booker T. Washington was simultaneously the most powerful Black man of his era and an advocate for accommodation with white supremacy. Acknowledging both facts doesn't diminish his achievements; it makes him human. George Washington was both the indispensable founder of American democracy and a man who shuffled enslaved people between states to maintain his property rights. Both truths can coexist.

The question isn't whether America has done terrible things—it has. The question is whether we're mature enough as a nation to reckon with that complexity while still believing in our highest ideals.

History, as Jesse Jackson knew, cannot be erased. The duty to contend with it falls to those still on this Earth.