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tate reeves
Why GOP Attempts to Sanitize History Will Fail
History doesn’t disappear when you shut down a website, threaten a museum’s funding, or remove museum exhibits. We carry the past within us.
May 04, 2025
In March, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, targeting the Smithsonian Institution and its museums—including the National Museum of African American History and Culture—for promoting “divisive narratives.” In doing so, Trump continues a pattern of erasing federal websites about notable African Americans and undermining institutions that honor our full national story.
Trump’s campaign echoes other recent efforts to whitewash the past. For example, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month, and recognized Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday—one of several Southern states that continue to honor the Confederacy. These endeavors are part of a coordinated attempt to revise the Confederacy’s racist history and diminish the impact of slavery in the Civil War.
Last month, reports emerged of historic artifacts being removed from the African American History Museum. In response, civil rights leaders have formed a coalition and will hold a “Freedom to Learn” campaign and march at the museum. They know what I do: that the GOP’s coordinated efforts to whitewash the past cannot erase the truth we carry within us.
I did not have to go to the Smithsonian’s National African American History Museum to learn this history; it is seared in my memory and encoded in my and this nation’s DNA.
As an African American originally from Memphis, Tennessee, I learned about our nation’s complicated history from a young age. I grew up in the city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, where my parents were born under the yoke of Jim Crow segregation, and where cotton was king during slavery.
Some of that history I learned in school. Most of it came from my family who lived that history. They taught me not just to remember, but to bear witness.
Even the physical landscape of the South helped tell the story: Confederate monuments, parks, and highways named after Confederate generals. I saw the Confederate flag and “Riding with Forrest” bumper stickers, referencing Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan. They were everyday reminders of the brutal history of slavery that refused to stay buried.
I did not have to go to the Smithsonian’s National African American History Museum to learn this history; it is seared in my memory and encoded in my and this nation’s DNA. That’s why the GOP’s campaign to rewrite history will fail.
Recently, I visited D.C. with my 73-year-old mother. I was there to give a talk about my book, which examines how race and immigration status have affected access to healthcare. We visited the African American History Museum and Culture on a Monday. The line stretched outside, as it often does. Since opening in 2016, it has welcomed more than 12 million visitors—Black, white, young, old—each one seeking a fuller understanding of our shared past.
I had visited the museum before. But Trump’s latest threat made me want to return—and to bring my mom. As a child, she picked cotton and endured taunts from white kids as she and her siblings walked to their segregated school. She didn’t need the museum to validate her story. But it did. It also validated mine.
Inside, I stood with her in front of exhibits honoring W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells. Their legacy helped shape my career. As a sociologist, I teach about many of the historic events covered in the museum’s exhibits, which don’t shy away from the ugly contradictions of America’s founding ideals. Instead, they make them plain.
Etched inside the building is a quote from founding museum director Lonnie Bunch III: “[T]here is nothing more powerful… than a nation steeped in its history. And there are few things as noble as honoring our ancestors by remembering.”
That’s what this new wave of revisionism seeks to stop: truthful remembrance. But history doesn’t disappear when you shut down a website, threaten a museum’s funding, or remove museum exhibits. Despite banning books, stifling academic freedom, and targeting scapegoated groups that culminated in the genocide of European Jews, we still know about the Holocaust. Why? Because survivors carried that truth forward.
As we left the museum, another African American family was entering. The father asked me, half jokingly, “Have they changed anything in the museum yet?”
“No,” I said, “but that’s exactly why we came—before he [Trump] can.”
We smiled in shared acknowledgment. That exchange shows why the GOP’s efforts to erase the truth are sparking the opposite effect: a renewed urgency to preserve it.
Regardless of what happens to the museum or Confederate Memorial Day commemorations, that unfiltered history lives in us. In the words of James Baldwin, also etched on the museum’s walls: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it… history is literally present in all that we do.”
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'Racist POS' Mike Collins Cheers Video of Ole Miss Mob Attack on Black Student
"This is not about Israel, Palestine, or Gaza. This is old-fashioned American racism and misogyny," said one observer. "These are the types of young white men who will grow up to be Republican governors, senators, and members of Congress."
May 03, 2024
Republican Georgia Congressman Mike Collins came under fire Friday over a social media post applauding video of white University of Mississippi students racially abusing a Black woman participating in a campus protest for Palestine.
Collins posted the video—in which numerous people can be heard grunting like apes and one young man is seen jumping up and down like a monkey in front of the Black woman—with the caption, "Ole Miss taking care of business."
Collins—or whoever's in charge of his social media accounts—sparred with Black leaders who called out his racism. When former Democratic Ohio state senator Nina Turner said the video showed "anti-Blackness," the congressman shot back, "*Anti-terroristness."
When Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) accused Collins of "fueling white supremacy," the Republican retorted, "Don't take down any more signs at our workplace, please" along with a photo of the Democrat triggering a fire alarm in a House of Representatives office building last year.
Around 30 protesters were rallying in support of Palestine in the Ole Miss Quad when counter-protesters gathered near the demonstrators. Some booed and chanted, "We want Trump!" Others singled out the Black woman—who NBC News said is a graduate student at the school—chanting "Lizzo, Lizzo, Lizzo," "take a shower," "your nose is huge," "fuck you, fat bitch," and "lock her up!"
The counter-protesters also sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves shared a separate video of the singing students on social media, captioning his post, "Warms my heart" and "I love Mississippi."
No racist language can be heard in the video shared by Reeves.
The Daily Mississippian reports the demonstrators were escorted off the Quad after counter-protesters threw water bottles at them.
Collins is no stranger to accusations of racism. Earlier this year, he suggested murdering migrants by throwing them from helicopters into the sea, in the manner of U.S.-backed South American dictators in the 1970s.
He also
introduced the Restricting Administration Zealots from Obliging Raiders (RAZOR) Act, which would ban the federal government from removing or altering "any state-constructed barriers installed to mitigate illegal immigration," such as the razor buoys installed in the Rio Grande by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Collins was also
accused of antisemitism after he amplified a social media post by an avowed neo-Nazi targeting a Washington Post reporter for being Jewish.
Ole Miss said Friday that "statements were made at the demonstration on our campus Thursday that were offensive and inappropriate."
"We cannot comment specifically about that video, but the university is looking into reports about specific actions," the school added. "Any actions that violate university policy will be met with appropriate action."
The Ole Miss incident comes amid rapidly spreading campus protests across the U.S. and around the world in response to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, which has killed, maimed, or left missing around 5% of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people, most of them civilians, while forcibly displacing nearly 9 in 10 people and driving hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.
While numerous Ole Miss students said they did not understand what the pro-Palestine protesters hoped to accomplish, others voiced support for the demonstrators—and for Palestine.
"As we've seen throughout history, time and time again, the student movement is never wrong. Time and time again, anytime there's a student protest, and you're against it, you're on the wrong side of history," Xavier Black, a junior majoring in international studies, told
The Daily Mississippian. "So I would like to be on the right side."
One Palestinian American Ole Miss student was teary-eyed as she thanked the protesters.
"Hey guys, I know that what just happened was really intimidating, and it was a little scary, but I just want to say I'm so proud of you guys," the student—who gave only her first name, Jana—said,
according to Mississippi Today. "This wasn't going to happen... without all of you guys. Palestine was being heard. And I just want to thank you guys so much."
"I know that was such a big risk, but this is the most that people have ever thought for us, so don't give up," she added. "I know that was really hard, but we need to keep fighting. This was just the start of it, okay?"
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Groups Press Biden EPA to Take Emergency Action Amid Jackson's Ongoing Water Crisis
"Water is life," said one organizer. "This petition is about making sure our voices, and our needs as residents, are centered in this process."
Aug 10, 2023
A coalition of Mississippi and national advocacy groups on Wednesday filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imploring urgent action to provide relief for communities suffering an ongoing water crisis in Jackson, the state capital.
The Mississippi Poor People's Campaign (PPC-MS) and the People's Advocacy Institute (PAI) led the petition on behalf of the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition. The filing—which was submitted under a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)—asks the EPA to use its emergency powers to order national, state, and local government agencies to ensure Jackson residents have access to safe drinking water and real-time alert systems to notify them about tap water issues.
"We are absolutely committed to ensuring that our communities are heard," PPC-MS organizer Danyelle Holmes said in a statement. "We are talking about our health, our lives, our ability to make a living. Water is life. This petition is about making sure our voices, and our needs as residents, are centered in this process. It's only right."
As the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a coalition member, explained:
In August 2022, flooding shut down Jackson's main water treatment plant, leaving thousands without safe drinking water. For the 160,000 residents of this 83% African-American city, this was only one episode in a multigenerational environmental injustice that has included lead contamination, hundreds of "boil water notices" due to the risk of the presence of disease-causing pathogens, and three complete shutoffs. A lack of trust in the system led most residents to stop drinking the water years ago.
Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Jackson on behalf of the EPA over the city's failure to provide residents with safe drinking water. City and state agencies subsequently agreed to accept federal oversight of Jackson's water system. The DOJ hired Tedd Henifin—the retired manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia—for one year at $400,000 to oversee an overhaul of Jackson's water system.
But coalition members allege Henifin "has excluded community members from regular, institutionalized engagement; failed to consistently and transparently inform residents about the status of the water system and repairs that led to the EPA filing the SDWA suit; and contracted with nonlocal businesses."
Brooke Floyd, co-director of coalition member JXN People's Assembly at the PAI, said: "What's been missing in this process is community. This is about our health and safety, and these issues are too important to be decided without our participation."
Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves—who on the campaign trail cited the role he played as lieutenant governor in blocking funding for Jackson's failing water system as proof of his fiscal conservatism—said last year that he is open to privatizing the system, which was suffering from decades of discriminatory neglect long before the current crisis.
Although Congress has allocated over $600 million to fix Jackson's water system, it is unclear how much of that will actually be spent on its intended purpose, given Reeves' boast.
As CCR noted, "The Jackson water crisis is similar to those facing other majority-Black and Latinx cities and communities around the country."
"Corroded and outdated water and wastewater systems," the group says, "are threatening the health of residents in, among other places, Alexandria, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; Laredo, Texas; and Lowndes County, Alabama."
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