As we mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S., the Trump administration is using official “America 250” commemorations to whitewash the nation’s true history.
Leaked documents from the Department of the Interior reveal a coordinated effort to remove exhibits on the history of marginalized groups. In more than a third of national parks, exhibits about Black, Indigenous, women’s, and labor history have been censored. This is a brazen attempt to cover up the truth that there have always been two Americas: the America of the exploiters and the America of the exploited.
The American Revolution was led by slave-owning and merchant elites who wanted to secure their power to exploit land and labor, independent of the British monarchy. “Founding fathers” like Jefferson and Madison propagated revolutionary ideas of equality, liberty and citizenship. They meant for these rights to be reserved for elites alone, but the concepts inadvertently had a deep impact on the consciousness of oppressed people here in the United States.
Consider Gabriel’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1800.
Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith, organized to seize the state house in Richmond. He and his co-organizers — other enslaved people, free Black people, and even some white workers — were moved by the idea that all men are created equal. They believed that if they could mount an insurrection, the poor whites they had so much in common with would rally alongside them to establish a real republic, in place of the counterfeit one built on slavery and exploitation. The ruling class ultimately learned of the plan and violently suppressed it, proving that their commitment to “liberty” extended only as far as their own self-interest. Rebellions like Gabriel’s showcase our country’s true history: both the founding fathers’ hypocrisy and the oppressed relentlessly fighting to make the false promises of the American Revolution real.
Similarly, the great labor uprisings are foundational to U.S. history.
At Paint Creek, Cabin Creek, and the Battle of Blair Mountain, armed miners — white, Black, and immigrant — fought the bosses, the National Guard, and the president himself for wages, benefits, and the right to organize. In 1877, railroad workers led a wildcat strike that shut down the nation’s freight trains. The 1892 Homestead Strike is seared into the memory of steel country. These heroic acts are the shared working-class lineage of everyone who has ever punched a clock.
“America 250” erases these examples because highlighting them would inspire millions of working people today to build on this legacy. What’s more, telling the truth would require acknowledging the continuous villainy of the capitalist class at every historical stage.
Predictably, the Trump administration has systematically worked to obscure that villainy. It has removed references to slavery, Native American forced removal, and Japanese-American internment from national park exhibits and signage. For example, at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, an exhibit on the contradiction between George Washington’s slaveholding and the Declaration’s promise of liberty was taken down.
We are in a battle for history.
As Trump works to implement his racist, pro-billionaire agenda, he is using history as a weapon. He wants us to find pride in a history of bigotry and exploitation because he and his movement are the modern continuation of that history.
Instead, we have to draw inspiration from our real working class heroes: those who struggled against colonialism and slavery, who organized for labor rights and voting rights, who marched and died in the fight against Jim Crow racism, who resisted the war machine, who fought for immigrants’ rights, or housing, or environmental protections. Every democratic right, civil liberty, and pro-worker reform we defend today was first won through intense struggle waged by these brave people all across this country.
