White Nationalists Are Trying to Erase Black History-Our Ancestors Taught Us to Fight Back
By Edrea Davis – Thanks to civil rights leader, Melanie L. Campbell, I had the privilege of being with Dr. Dorothy Irene Height at NCNW headquarters on the night Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. As the nation celebrated, I watched tears roll down her cheeks. “I never thought I’d see the day,” she whispered. It was a moment of unspeakable pride and progress—for her, for us, for the generations before and after.
She believed we had turned a corner. That all the marching, organizing, teaching, and truth-telling had brought us to a new chapter in America’s story.
She would be horrified today.
From defunding the National Museum of African American History and Culture to banning Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ books in schools across the country, there is a full-scale attack on truth, memory, and progress in America. This isn’t about protecting children—it’s about erasing the hard-won victories and painful lessons of our shared past. It’s about fear. It’s about control.
Former President Donald Trump’s latest executive order—ironically titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”—proposes stripping federal funding from the Smithsonian Institution and, specifically, the very museum Dr. Height helped advocate for. This is not just an attack on an institution. It’s an attack on us. On our ancestors. On our stories.
The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), which Dr. Height led with grace and moral force for over 50 years, has rightly condemned this executive order. The museum tells the truth—not just of slavery, but of resistance, resilience, innovation, and triumph. From Harriet Tubman to Hip-Hop, it documents the real, layered, beautiful, and brutal story of Black America—and, in doing so, tells the full story of America.
As NCNW stated: “Efforts to withhold funding from the Smithsonian complex, especially the National Museum of African American History and Culture, threaten not only a vital educational resource but also the very integrity of our national narrative.”
The people pushing these bans and defunding efforts want to take us back. Back to a time when only one version of America was allowed to be told. Back to a time when Black people were invisible in textbooks except as slaves. Back to silence.
But as Dr. Height taught us: we will not go back. We cannot go back.
I imagine her now—huddled up in Heaven with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Mrs. Evelyn Lowery, Rosa Parks, and so many others. Disgusted, yes—but also determined. Optimistic still. They’ve been through worse. They didn’t fight for freedom and truth just to see us let it all unravel.
This is our call to action.
We must unite to fight back. We must organize, educate, and tell our stories boldly and unapologetically—around dinner tables, on social media, in classrooms, and in the streets.
We can do this—because racism is not new to Black Americans. It may have slipped into the background for a time, but it never disappeared. We always knew it was there—lurking in policy, in culture, in silence, or screaming through the brutality of police violence against unarmed people.
Now is the time to be steady, grounded, and fierce in our commitment to truth. Let them come for the history books—we’ll write more. Let them come for our museums—we’ll build new ones. Let them try to erase us—we will only grow louder.
Whether cloaked as white nationalism or expressed through open white supremacy, these efforts to rewrite history are nothing new. We have always resisted. And we always will.
