The Immokalee Statue of Liberty by Kat Rodriguez on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington on July 8. The White House released a memo claiming the museum has shifted its displays in favor of activism and wokeness, not a historical standpoint. 

One of my earliest childhood memories in 1967 was visiting the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, D.C. 

At 7, my boilerplate knowledge of our country’s history was mainly informed by what I would later call the great American false narrative, that our great founders created the Declaration of Independence and wrote the U.S. Constitution with the help of God himself; that brave settlers rode the inevitable wave of manifest destiny westward and defeated the savage Indians; and that our military victories were unmatched (no mention of Vietnam, natch).

Nothing that I remember seeing at the Smithsonian on that visit caused me to radically rethink what I’d learned from the 1960s cowboy shows I’d devoured, even passing references to slavery and the fact that women couldn’t vote until 1920.  

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In 1999, I earned a college history degree (honors in the major, thank you very much), focusing on the New Deal and the American Populist and Progressive Eras. After my first stint in college in the late 1970s, where I learned mostly about battles and legislation, by 1998 that curriculum had been adjusted to reflect a more nuanced reading of how to understand America. 

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