The Trump administration has initiated the return of exhibits from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to their original owners, including the original 1960 Woolworth’s lunch counter, according to Black Press USA.
The exhibit features sections of the original lunch counter where the sit-in protests began in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Feb. 1, 1960, with four students from North Carolina A&T State University: Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, David Richmond, and Joseph McNeil. The HBCU students were attacked after sitting at the whites-only section and being denied service. North Carolina Democratic Congresswoman and A&T alum Alma Adams said Trump can take the exhibits down, but the people will never forget. “This president is a master of distraction and is destroying what it took 250 years to build. Here’s another distraction in his quest for attention. Another failure of his first 100 days,” she said.
“We are long past the time when you can erase history—anyone’s history. You can take down exhibits, close buildings, shut down websites, ban books, and attempt to alter history, but we are long past that point. We will never forget!”
Trump attacked the museum, often referred to as the “Blacksonian,” after signing an executive order targeting the nation’s parks and museums.
“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,” he said, according to USA Today.
His viewpoints are supported by attorney Lindsey Halligan, who is allegedly consulting with Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties and said the museum needs “changing.”
The lunch counter is just one of several artifacts being returned. Long-standing civil rights leader and pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church Dr. Amos Brown revealed a letter confirming the return of a Bible and George W. Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880, one of the first books written on racism. The items have been displayed since the museum’s opening in September 2016. Amos said the items have sentimental value as the Bible once belonged to his father. “The Bible—that’s my father’s Bible and the Bible I used in the Civil Rights Movement,” Amos said.
“When we went on demonstrations, we always had the Bible.”
Exhibit removals and the target have sparked a firestorm of criticism among advocates fighting to preserve the museum as it was initially founded. Black churches across state lines have rallied against Trump’s accusations of “divisive, race-centered ideology.” Rev. Robert Turner of Empowerment Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore did the math and began asking members of his congregation for an extra offering to support museum preservation efforts.
“For only $25 a year, you can protect Black history,” Moss told his congregation.
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