As the Trump administration seeks to overhaul how the nation recognizes the history of the United States and Black Americans, curators of that legacy are saying it’s more important than ever to recognize their stories as Black History Month nears a close.
From attacks on the Smithsonian Institution’s interpretation of Black history, to removing text about slavery at national parks, the Trump administration has pushed to embrace a historical narrative that critics say erases some of the most violent and problematic truths of the nation’s history.
The Trump administration’s reframing of US history has focused on public institutions funded by the federal government, where some displays have already been altered by official actions.
But some local officials said the policy has been felt more broadly, with some worried that any language accurately depicting the often cruel reality of Black history in the United States could be challenged by the federal government.
“We’re in a completely new paradigm,” said Noelle Trent, president of the nonprofit Museum of African American History, based in Boston and Nantucket. “You try to be pragmatic, but sometimes there’s a line in the sand.”
Last year, the museum decided not to accept some funding from the National Park Service because of potential federal pressure on its exhibits and interpretation, Trent said.
“There was a very real concern they could interfere in a very significant way,” Trent said.
Although the museum, the largest of its kind in New England, partners with the National Parks of Boston for some services, such as tours and security, the organization operates independently, Trent said.
The Trump administration has defended its campaign to remove the rough edges from the national story as a way to reduce divisiveness, find common purpose, and concentrate on what unifies people rather than what separates them.
In a Feb. 3 proclamation for Black History Month, Trump wrote that “the progressive movement and far-left politicians have sought to needlessly divide our citizens on the basis of race, painting a toxic and distorted and disfigured vision of our history, heritage, and heroes.”
Trent, however, described the alternative approach as building a “mono-narrative” in which some groups risk losing their voice.
“Before you know it, you can’t even see yourself in your community, your society,” she said. “The stakes are very, very high. It’s incredibly scary.”
At the museum, Trent pointed to a bill of sale for a slave bought in Boston in the 1740s. Nearby was a first-edition printing of Black poet Phillis Wheatley’s groundbreaking work from the 18th century.
Under Trump’s campaign, she said, museum officials might be pressured to remove such exhibits.
Across Massachusetts, there have been a growing number of efforts in recent years to honor Black history.
At King’s Chapel in Boston, a sculpture was unveiled in September of a Black woman releasing birds from a cage, honoring 219 people who had been enslaved by congregants and ministers of the church.
In Roxbury, a 2023 study requested by the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry showed that about 58 people had been enslaved by parishioners of First Church there.
And last October, Beacon Hill Scholars, a nonprofit dedicated to African American history in that neighborhood, launched a self-guided Black Freedom Trail with audio narration.
“In some ways, it’s been galvanizing,” Christle Rawlins-Jackson, president of Beacon Hill Scholars, said of the administration’s efforts to purge Black history.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what has been happening,” Rawlins-Jackson said. “Maybe you’d call it an underground movement, even though it’s visible.”
In New Bedford, Lee Blake, president of the local historical society, said telling the city’s antislavery history has taken on greater urgency since Trump returned to the White House.
“You want to carry on that legacy,” said Blake, whose ancestors had been enslaved, worked on the Underground Railroad, and came to New Bedford in 1820.
“But it’s more carrying on the element of the truth of our history, not some fictionalized version that makes one group of people feel that they have the right to oppress another group,” she added.
Many Black organizations are approaching the historical society “for ways to replicate and to save historic spaces in their communities,” Blake said.
In the second Trump administration, federal support for race-related programming has been jeopardized following a 2025 executive order that claimed “objective facts” about American history are being replaced “with a distorted narrative driven by ideology.”
The executive order, titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, accused cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian of falling under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
“As with most things related to this administration, it has to be looked at as propaganda,” said Chad Williams, professor of African American and Black diaspora studies at Boston University. “His proclamation is really a reflection of how he views Black people and Black history as really beneath a larger narrative of American greatness.”
Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, an advocacy organization that includes retired and active park employees, said the federal government’s pushback on how parks interpret their sites has been distressing.
“The administration dictating what stories we can tell, and what we can use, and how to talk about slavery and Black history, are having a real impact on how parks can tell this story,” said Thompson, a former national parks ranger at the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington, Va., and the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu.
In September, the infamous “Scourged Back” photo of an enslaved Louisiana man was removed from exhibits at the Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia.
Around the same time, references to slavery were taken down at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown raided the federal armory in 1859.
And panels about President George Washington’s enslavement of Blacks were removed in January in Philadelphia by the National Park Service until a judge this month ordered them reinstalled.
“This has a real chilling effect,” Thompson said. “National parks should be a place where people can truly put themselves in a space of history, and to use the landscape and the exhibits to immerse themselves in the story of our history.”
“It’s not always a happy story, and it’s important to share,” she added. “We have to use the past and learn from the past.”
The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment.
In New Bedford, a statue was unveiled in 2023 to honor Frederick Douglass, the famed 19th-century abolitionist who settled there for three years after escaping slavery in Maryland.
The statue is located in Abolition Row Park, which honors the city’s connection to the abolition movement and Underground Railroad.
The need to tell these stories is increasingly important, said Blake, the historical society president.
“We have an administration that wants to tear down the placards or the kiosks that talk about George Washington having a slave‚” Blake said. “Why wouldn’t you want to tell that story? That’s truth.”
Justina Perry, who in 2020 cofounded a network to promote Black businesses in New Bedford, said she senses a different, less-receptive attitude toward Black history now. That effort, called Buy Black New Bedford, was created following the murder of George Floyd.
Still, Perry said, she is committed to celebrating Black History Month with her 6-year-old daughter.
“As a mom, I feel that way, and showing what our identity is, and that we’re proud of it and finding spaces that really nurture that and center Black culture,” she said.
At the Museum of African American History, Trent said, that commitment will not waver.
The museum currently is showing an exhibit titled “The Black Voices of the Revolution: Liberty, Emancipation, and the Struggle for Independence.”
As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, the exhibit nods to courage and triumph. But it also addresses imperfections in what the country’s founders foresaw as a long journey toward a “more perfect union.”
“There are people who are uncomfortable with these stories,” Trent said. “But you can be uncomfortable with something, and then figure out why you’re uncomfortable.
“The way we interpret our history hasn’t changed.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com. Omar Mohammed can be reached at omar.mohammed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter (X) @shurufu.