By Marian Wright Edelman
As Women’s History Month draws to a close, there’s been one more broad attack on methods of sharing our nation’s history: on March 27, President Donald Trump issued a new executive order affecting the 21 museums and 14 education and research centers that are part of the Smithsonian Institution, including the American Women’s History Museum, which is still years away from breaking ground on its official site, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Zoo. According to the order, the Smithsonian Institution is “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” which falls under a larger “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
The order says, “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn—not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” and assigns Vice President JD Vance to work with Congress to deny funding for exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values” and “divide Americans based on race.” Another piece of the order seeks to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology” and “take action to reinstate” them, allowing tributes to White supremacist Confederate generals and others that were removed in the last five years to be brought back to former positions of glory.
Five years ago on the same date, March 27, our nation lost the “Dean of the Civil Rights Movement,” Rev. Joseph Lowery. When Joe was about 11 years old in 1930s Alabama, a policeman hit him in the stomach with a bully stick for being in a White man’s way. He responded by trying to run home to get his father’s gun. His father stopped him from retaliating that day, but Joe made it his mission to fight back against injustice when he grew up, and he remained a courageous warrior for justice all of his life. Rev. Lowery was a constant companion to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the march from Selma to Montgomery, and a cofounder and later long-term president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He fought against apartheid in South Africa and for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality at home. And many Americans remember his moving benediction at the end of President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, and his prayer for our nation that day.
Rev. Lowery began by quoting from the final verse of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”: “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way, Thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray…” He continued by acknowledging a moment of national and global financial uncertainty: “Because we know You’ve got the whole world in Your hand, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations. Our faith does not shrink, though pressed by the flood of mortal ills. For we know that, Lord, You are able, and You’re willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.”
He asked forgiveness for sowing “seeds of greed and corruption” that led to reaping “the whirlwind of social and economic disruption,” and prayed that Americans would be willing “to make sacrifices, to respect Your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.” And he prayed: “Help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance. And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek Your will…We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won’t get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know You will not leave us alone. With Your hands of power and Your heart of love, help us then now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nations; when tanks will be beaten into tractors; when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
Some Americans might see that prayer today as degrading or divisive, yet many others might still say: amen.