An imposing statue of General Confederate Robert E. Lee was removed in Richmond, Virginia, in September 2021. It was one of the many monuments and statues of Confederate leaders withdrawn or moved following demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
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Steve Helber / AP
President Trump signed a executive decree Thursday, aimed at “restoring the truth and mental health to American history” – denounce what the order has described as efforts to “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by throwing its founding principles and its historical milestones in a negative light”. The ordinance calls for the removal of “the divider ideology centered on the race” of museums and research centers of the Smithsonian. He also calls on the interior secretary to restore the public monuments, the statues and other markers that have been deleted or modified since 2020. But it is not clear how many sites – and which will be affected by the decree.
President Trump called on the interior secretary to determine whether commemorative monuments, statues, markers or properties that come under the interior jurisdiction “have been deleted or modified to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or including any other partology office”. If so, the executive decree calls on the ministry to restore such statues or monuments. The Ministry of the Interior includes the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and nine other offices. The ministry did not respond to the request for NPR comments concerning the decree.
The order also orders the interior department to ensure that all monuments, statues or memorials under its jurisdiction “do not contain descriptions, representations or other contents which are inappropriate in the past or the life of the Americans (including people living in colonial times), and rather focus on the greatness of American achievements and progress or, with respect for natural characteristics, beauty, beauty, the abundance and the greatness of the American earth.
A The national calculation on the breed – and the monuments in the past – grew up after George Floyd was killed by the police in 2020. More than 200 public confederate symbols across the country have been removed, moved or renowned in less than a year and a half, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Seth Levi, responsible for the SPLC program strategy, says that many of these moves have not taken place on land under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior.
“Even for objects that are on public lands, these are normally land held and controlled by municipalities or governments of the States. I am not aware of the moves on the land of the National Park Service”, explains Levi. “There have been moves to land controlled by the Ministry of Defense with the names of the military bases, (but) it is not clear for us how many monuments have already been deleted that this would really apply.”
Although the action of Thursday’s decree is limited for the moment, Levi says that he thinks that the Trump administration is trying to “minimize the fact that slavery has been a large part of our history” and that the contributions of racial minorities to American history “seem to be threatened”. He also underlines the SPLC data showing that historicallyConfederate monuments and names on schools, roads and other sites grew up in the United States at the start of the Jim Crow era and at the time of the historic case Brown c. Board of Educationin which the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
The National Park Service has already revised its websites
Thursday’s executive order comes from other changes to the National Park Service websites. After January by President Trump executive decree Regarding gender ideology said that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, men and women”, the NPS deleted All references to transgender people on the Stonewall National Monument website. Weeks later, he had Deleted websites Containing information on transgender activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
The National Parks Conservation Association, a non -partisan group which recommends protecting national parks, published a declaration concerning Thursday’s order. “Throughout the country, our national parks protect the vital American history, from the birthplaces of American presidents to the birthplaces of our democracy. Our parks tell stories of the civil rights movement, the civil war, and beyond,” said Alan Spears, principal director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “Each American who cares about the history of our country should be concerned about what people, places and themes disappear afterwards.”
Last year, the National Park Foundation, the NPS fund collection partner, announced a Historical grant Of $ 100 million from the philanthropic organization The Lilly Endowment, a game of which would help “tell a more complete story of America: offering a more complete historical account, including the experiences of the communities whose voices and contributions have not been entirely told in the context of American history”. Lilly’s endowment refused to comment whether Trump’s decree would have an impact on the grant. The National Park Foundation did not respond to the request for NPR comments.
Erin Thompson, author of SMASSHING STATES: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments, said the wording of the order – and in particular the sentence “false reconstruction of American history” – Attracted his attention. “The use of the term reconstruction is quite busy there, referring to the post-civil war period of what some people consider an attack on the culture of the South White,” she said. “This is perfectly part of the account of the” lost cause “, making an argument not only that the civil war did not concern slavery, but implying that it was slavery is somehow an insult to the southern force.”
“You cannot control historical memory by controlling the monuments,” explains Thompson. “There are so many people who tell their children other stories, who lead group groups, who write books. There are so many ways to learn the story that does not look at a piece of stone.”
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