To Be Equal: National Urban League’s Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem Defies Trump’s Crusade to Rewrite American History
“He can try to rewrite history, but we have the receipts. And as the Smithsonian’s exhibits magnificently illustrate, African Americans have survived—and overcome—much worse than the frothings of a puffed-up president who fancies himself a king.”
—Eugene Robinson
The history of enslavement, segregation, and discrimination in the United States traditionally is seen as a Southern story. As schoolchildren, we are taught that Slavery was a Southern institution, which the North fought to end. Lynchings and Ku Klux Klan rallies only happened in the South, as far as we were taught, as did the protests, marches, sit-ins and other courageous resistance that finally brought an end to Jim Crow.
If Donald Trump has way, even this incomplete history of civil rights would be wiped from the record.
But he will not have his way.
Contrary to the “mystical view of an imagined past” behind Trump’s ludicrously-titled executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” enslavement, segregation, and discrimination—and the courageous resistance—are part of the history not only of the South, but of the North as well. And our Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem will tell those stories, whether Trump wants us to or not.
Trump’s executive order was a naked declaration of war on all cultural institutions that illuminate uncomfortable chapters of our past and a direct assault on the nation’s flagship institution of its type, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the “Blacksonian,” as NMAAHC is colloquially known, is fighting back. And so are we.
The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem not only will shine a light on the past—not just the traditional Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and ’60s, but the early roots of the African American presence in the North to the Black Lives Matter movement—but inspire social change in the present.
“As a museum focused on social justice, we hope to connect and communicate with the people, communities, and initiatives that are interested or becoming interested in fighting for change,” museum director and chief curator Jennifer Scott said. “The museum will be a place where one can see and feel the work of the many people who fought for justice in urban centers in the North and reflect on past civil rights efforts so that we can imagine and inspire new possibilities of collective action.”
The museum is part of the Urban League Empowerment Center, a $242 million, 414,000-square-foot complex that will house the National Urban League’s new headquarters, along with 170 units of affordable housing, below-market office space for non-profits and community groups, and retail space.
The museum will serve as a resource where visitors can learn more about the different grassroots movements in the past and present, various civil rights legislation and policies that Americans have fought for, and contemporary initiatives and tools that are available to fight inequities and injustice. We also will host public and education programs that allow people to reflect on democratic ideas and ideals and that will encourage people to engage with one another in public forums and conversations, especially through culture and the arts.
Trump’s executive order—which does not carry the force of law—declares his administration’s desire that cultural and historical institutions reflect only the “uplifting” moments of American history. It’s part of an insidious campaign to erase systemic oppression from our collective memory and advance the myth that racial gaps are, instead, the result of “merit and hard work.”
But the truth will not so easily be subdued. We did not know, when we began planning the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem, that the political climate of today would make our mission even more urgent. And we don’t know what the political climate will be when the museum opens its doors next year. But we do know that we will never succumb to any efforts to whitewash American history.
—May 10, 2025
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