Harvard Historian Responds to Trump’s Order Targeting the Smithsonian

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, as President Trump attempts to rewrite the history books, he’s targeting the Smithsonian. It’s the world’s largest museum complex. An executive order promises to eradicate what he calls, quote, “a divisive, race centered ideology at the institution.” Civil rights groups are hitting back saying Trump is whitewashing America’s complex and troubled past. The award-winning author and Harvard professor, Tiya Miles is an expert who joins Michel Martin to reflect on what this could all mean for the future of the United States.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Professor Tiya Miles, thank you so much for talking with us.

TIYA MILES, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND AUTHOR, “ALL THAT SHE CARRIED”: Thanks for having me. I’m really happy to be here, Michel.

MARTIN: So, you, very well known in your profession, also I would say outside of it, National Book Award winner, MacArthur Genius Grant winner, your professor of history at Harvard, and a lot of your work focuses on sort of lives that we haven’t seen as much of, the lives of African American people, the lives of African American girls, and also indigenous people too. So, you write books, of course, as most historians do. You’ve written a novel. But you also have written about, you know, artifacts, things that have been — that we can see ourselves that are sort of in museums. What role do you think museums play in our understanding of history?

MILES: Museums are critically important, Michel. I mean, to me as a researcher, museums have been foundational to the way I can ask questions about the past in the ways that I can understand the past. There are many scholars who feel similarly that we need to access materials in museums as well as the experts who curate those materials and who steward them as a way to reconstruct models of things that took place in previous centuries. So, for example, in one of my recent books, which is called “All That She Carried,” it focuses on an antique cotton sack that was passed down through a family of enslaved and free black women in the 19th century. And I first saw that sack in the Smithsonian, in a museum. Its existence of that museum, that institution that allowed me entry points into what turned into a really meaningful story, both for me and for numerous readers.

MARTIN: Just briefly, would you just tell the story of Ashley’s sack? Like what’s on it and what does it say? What is the story of Ashley’s sack?

MILES: Yes. Ashley’s sack is a beautiful rare artifact. There hasn’t been another thing identified like it, you know, across any collection that has to do with history and culture of African America. It’s an old cotton bag. It’s an agricultural bag or sack that would’ve been used to carry, you know, beans or seeds in the 19th century. And an enslaved woman named Rose had in her possession in the 1850s when she learned that her daughter, Ashley, was going to be sold away from her. At that time, Rose packed this particular sack that we still have today that we can see in our museums, with various items that she thought her small child would need to survive a separation from her. And on the sack itself, we have an embroidered description of what it is that I’m sharing with you right now. Because a descendant of that family, a granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of that family named Ruth Middleton, sewed the story onto the sac in the form of sentences. So it is an artifact, it’s also a text. It captures and reflects back to us the trials of African American experience, but also the perseverance of black family ties and of love. Because what that sack says in the center of the embroidery is, and this is a quote, “it be filled with my love always.” And that became incredibly necessary to Ashley’s survival, because the sack also tells us that she never saw her mother Rose again after that sale.

MARTIN: It’s devastating. You know, one of the reasons we also called you is that, as you know, recently President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” and it directs federal institutions like the Smithsonian, which he specifically names to remove what it calls improper ideology and to emphasize more uplifting portrayals of the American past. And it singles out the National Museum of African American History and Culture for what it says is this kind of inappropriate kind of race ideology. So, just the first question I had for you is when you heard that I’m just wondering what went through your mind.

MILES: It was like an arrow to the heart to know that the person who has the bully pulpit, who has this massive platform, has decided to use it to attack a precious cultural treasure, the zoning institution, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I felt very hurt as a black woman, as a scholar, as an American. So, that’s what happened for me emotionally. What I was thinking was, wait a minute, how could this happen? Because I recall being at a convening just a handful of months ago, soon after the presidential election with many scholars, including scholars who work at NMAAHC, the African American History and Culture Museum. And curators who are also scholars from NMAAHC were telling the people at the convening that they were feeling positive, they were feeling confident, because even though we had the election results that we did, they had just taken a group of congressional representatives through the museum. They had given them a tour, as is customary. And the representatives were positive about what it is that they saw displayed in the museum. Because NMAAHC has always had, at the center of its narrative, the notion that black America story is America’s story. There’s not a separation. They’re deeply intertwined.

MARTIN: Let me go back for a minute, you said that you felt hurt. Do you mind just sharing a little bit more about that? Why did you feel hurt?

MILES: It does hurt because it feels like a direct attack. I mean, the language of executive order is vague, right? We want to hear, you know, African stories, we want to hear stories that are highlighting America’s greatness. You know, we want to hear a correct ideology. These terms could mean anything, but I fear that there is a more insidious aspect to them and that a directive to restore or highlight America’s greatness actually means something more like a directive to diminish sideline, exclude stories of black America, stories of many Americans that are characterized by beautiful moments, yes, but also quite a lot of struggle and quite a lot of struggle at sometimes against the state. So, I felt that my stories, my family stories, our people stories, and the stories of many, many different communities of the American people were going to be sidelined, were going to be attacked, were going to be deemed not great or not good, or no longer a part of the American narrative.

MARTIN: I’m looking at the directive here or the executive order. It says that, over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. And rather than fostering unity in a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress American has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe. That’s the first, you know, paragraph. But I think their argument is that this — that a focus on race is inherently divisive and that it makes people feel bad, specifically, some people feel bad, and that that detracts from the social fabric or our national fabric. So, if that is the argument, what would you say?

MILES: I want to just put to the side for a second your question about race and people feeling bad, to go to the point in the order that you read, that has to do with the revision of history or rewriting history. The executive order talks about revisionist history and rewriting history as if these are bad things, but actually, history is revision. It is a process of looking to find all the evidence that we can to help us to construct a model of the past, of asking tough questions about that evidence of weighing evidence, you know, against itself and against the other information that we can bring in, of analyzing the evidence and interpreting it, of putting it forward, of having it be read and assessed, and yes, criticized by our peers being sent back to us. We looked to correct our mistakes, if possible. We refine it. We revise it. We go through the process again and again. So, history does not just stand still. It’s not some kind of solidified ossified thing that once you’ve got it, it’s just there and there are no changes. We want history to change. It is a process of research, of investigation, of dialogue, of engagement that helps us to move closer and closer to a full and clearer understanding of the past. So, I would say, yes, let’s embrace revision to revise things to see again. We need to see the past again. We need to see ourselves again if we want to see clearly and in a full way.

MARTIN: But now to the question of feelings, because the other argument here seems to be that these new learnings make people feel bad, especially certain people feel bad, and that that is bad.

MILES: Yes.

MARTIN: And their argument is that it runs at the social fabric. What’s your take on that?

MILES: Well, I’d say that the fundamental value here that I would like to uplift, that I believe the Smithsonian institution also highlights is the value of knowledge, right? The production and the sharing of knowledge. Sometimes knowledge can produce negative feelings. Sometimes we can feel sad when we learn. That’s what it means to be a human being with complex emotions. We can’t just simplify the existence of things in the world so that we can feel happy about them. We are thinking adults who have the responsibility, the duty to try to shape and support a complex society in a diverse and very complicated world. So, we need as much knowledge as we can get in order to do that. But with regard to feelings, the executive order I think mentions a concern about people feeling shame. I’ll say, first of all, that pointed to shame in particular is an interesting choice, because there are many different emotional responses that a person could have when learning about the past. Why would shame be the one that the president is highlighting? I have presented my work on the history of slavery and abolition like in front of many, many different kinds of community audiences, and oftentimes they actually feel a sense of pride. They feel proud to know that there are individuals in the history of this country who identified injustices and who fought against them. So, shame does not have to be a default kind of response to learning about a complex past.

MARTIN: Their argument is that because federal funding is a part of this, that it should serve a patriotic purpose, a sort of a unifying purpose to give people a sense of pride in the country. What is your — what’s your — what is your response to that?

MILES: It is possible for museums to tell stories that can encourage patriotism, you know, or a love of country, and at the same time tell stories that are complex. Love is not a simple thing. There are many people in my family who I feel deep and great and abiding love for. We get around Thanksgiving table, we might have some disagreements that we need to work out. That is just the reality of what it means to be a human being and what it means to live in a society. So, I reject the notion that a patriotic museum or a patriotic exhibition has to only tell stories in a way that emphasizes, you know, hearts and flowers and, you know, boxes of bonbons. That is not what it means to be a human being to live in community or to be an American.

MARTIN: Are you worried?

MILES: I am worried. I’m worried for the Smithsonian. I’m worried for our national parks. I’m worried for our universities. I am very worried about a president who seems willing to just crash through boundaries and existing practices and even the law to express his desires and to try to enforce his will. This is not the country that I was born into. It’s not the country that I want my grandchildren to be born into. And I think we all need to express a sense of care and concern for our cultural treasures and for the future direction of our country. I worry, Michel, that perhaps the president feels like the Smithsonian Museums are his personal playgrounds, but they are not. They belong to all of us, the American people, and we have to defend them.

MARTIN: What would you say to people who agree with him that these — that too many of the — let’s just put it this way, too many of the offerings of these institutions in the current moment as they understand it create feelings of division, perhaps feelings of shame and are not supportive of the social fabric or of our — sort of our kind of shared experience as a country?

MILES: Well, I would say to anyone who feels like they are being left out of the American narrative that I know this is painful. I am a part of a community that has felt left out of the American narrative for decades and even centuries. And it’s only been in my lifetime that there has been more of a focus on black history, you know, or women’s history or native history or any other kind of particular history of certain groups. So, I want to acknowledge that it doesn’t feel good. We need representation for everyone. They should express to the Smithsonian that they’d like to see different kinds of exhibitions, different kinds of narratives upheld. But that is a very different thing than one man sitting at the top of the country looking down and dictating what is to take place instead of museums in which he really does not have authority over. The Smithsonian is run by a board. It needs to answer to Congress. And people who would like to see their community stories represented differently, can certainly reach out to the board members, reach out to their representatives, reach out to the curators, give feedback at the Smithsonian. They’re always looking for feedback. And participate together as a collective to make these narratives, to make these stories and more multiple and more representative of all of the American people.

MARTIN: Professor Tiya Miles, thank you so much for talking with us.

MILES: Thank you, Michel.