Can Trump Erase Black History?
Detailing his hell-bent efforts
“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” George Orwell
Bottom Line Upfront
1. A Full-Scale Retrenchment of Civil Rights Gains
The Tr*ump administration is orchestrating a methodical rollback of the landmark civil rights advancements that date back to the 1960s, particularly those enacted under President Lyndon B. Johnson. This includes dismantling policies around voting rights, higher education access, Medicaid and Medicare, immigration reform, and equal opportunity in federal hiring—hallmarks of LBJ’s Great Society that were designed to benefit African Americans in particular.
2. Targeting Black Voters and Students
Through the proposed SAVE Act and aggressive cuts to the Department of Education, the administration is disenfranchising voters—particularly African Americans and other people of color—by imposing burdensome documentation requirements. Simultaneously, it is gutting financial aid programs like Pell Grants, defunding DEI initiatives, and punishing universities that support racial equity, undermining educational access for students who have been historically and intentionally marginalized.
3. White-Nationalist Immigration and Employment Agendas
The administration has launched a racially motivated immigration policy by prohibiting travel from predominantly Black and brown nations while welcoming White South Africans to resettle. It has also eliminated anti-segregation mandates for federal contractors. These actions indicate a systemic effort to stem the growth of a multi-racial America.
4. The Erasure of Black History and Cultural Memory
Trump’s executive orders ban DEI content in schools, defund Black history museums, censor military academy libraries, and delete federal references to Black historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson. The orders aim to replace truthful, inclusive history with sanitized mythology—resurrecting Confederate monuments while branding education about systemic racism as "divisive ideology."
5. Authoritarian Overreach in Government Loyalty and Censorship
Through sweeping executive orders, Trump demands personal loyalty from federal employees and restructures agency authority to ensure obedience to presidential directives. These actions resemble autocratic governance, substituting allegiance to constitutional law with loyalty to one individual—signaling a dangerous descent into executive authoritarianism.
6. Local Reparative Justice Efforts Provide Hopeful Counterpoints
But there’s good news too. Additional reparations initiatives in Washington state, Delaware, Maryland, and communities like Northeast Arkansas show that grassroots, city-, and state-level actors are stepping up. Through housing remedies, reparations commissions, and faith-based investment in Black-led nonprofits, these efforts model a more just, restorative future—even as federal policy attempts to erase the past.
Intro
I read an article on Axios a few weeks ago—titled ‘Trump’s 2025 seeks to reverse LBJ’s 1965'—that has remained with me amid the daily torrent of concerning, disturbing, and terrifying news emanating from the White House.
It’s easy to think that what the Tr*mp administration is doing is a reflexive action to the short-lived racial justice resurgence following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd or a long-overdue reaction to America electing an African American, Barack Obama, for president in 2008 and again in 2012.
Undoing LBJ’s Civil Rights Legacy?
Axios’ Russell Contreras argues that Tr*mp’s ongoing retribution campaign against anything and everything DEI represents a fundamental backlash that has been simmering in the background for 60 years: seeking to upend the federal policy changes—and the social changes that accompanied them—that constitute an essential legacy of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society achievements.
Contreras writes: “Two months into his term, Trump has already overturned, weakened or targeted LBJ policies on voting rights, desegregation, the environment, immigration, education, affirmative action and health care.”[1]
What did LBJ accomplish 60 years ago?
Signed the Voting Rights Act, which required states to abide by the 15th Amendment’s guarantee of the right to vote for all, ensuring that this right would not be denied based on race.
Signed the Higher Education Act to increase access and affordability for lower- and middle-income students through programs like Pell Grants, work-study, and federal student loans, while also supporting higher education institutions that aid specific student populations (like Black students) to attend, thereby encouraging broader participation across income and class.
Signed Medicare and Medicaid legislation providing broad-based health insurance for seniors and low-income individuals and families for the first time, once again making a significant positive impact on African American individuals and households who had very limited access at the time to affordable health care services.
LBJ also signed a bill that rid the nation of its racist quota system in immigration (allowing only Northern and Western Europeans in) and opened the door for immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Most importantly, he issued an executive order requiring equal opportunity for Blacks and women in federal contractor recruitment, hiring, and training.[2]
Methodically, the administration seeks to undo all of these Acts and bills, presumably to return to a time when America was “great.” Or, according to the president’s other repeated claim, to ‘take America back.’
How is Tr*mp doing this? Briefly:
Voting Rights: The administration is working with Republicans in Congress to build upon what the Supreme Court initiated in 2013 (Shelby County v. Holder) to dismantle the essential infrastructure of the original Act through the so-called SAVE Act. This bill, which purports to counter ‘rampant voter fraud’ (that doesn’t exist), would require proof of citizenship to register to vote or to update one’s registration through a birth certificate or passport. No more online or mail-in voter registration.
As for “proof,” millions of Americans don’t have a birth certificate in hand and often have never owned a passport. Additionally, tens of millions of women possess birth certificates that don’t match their married names. Opponents of the SAVE Act, primarily Democrats, argue that this constitutes a type of 21st-century poll tax, making it harder for millions of people to vote and disproportionately affecting Black voters. Similar bills have been enacted in states like Arizona and Kansas, disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters in those two places.
Meanwhile, as we wait to see if the SAVE Act becomes law, the administration has issued an executive order that removes Congress's and states’ rights to set voter registration rules, potentially disenfranchising even more voters. Thankfully, dozens of civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit in late March to counter this order and are awaiting a court date, hopefully this month.
To be clear, voters who register currently must provide any of the following: a valid driver’s license number, a stated number, or their Social Security number. They also must declare, under penalty of perjury, that they are US citizens and eligible to vote.
Higher Education: I’ve covered parts of this before. Tr*mp has intentionally decimated the federal Department of Education and hopes to shut down the department entirely within months. All types of programs are at risk, most of which directly impact current and future Black students: Pell grants, federal student loans and loan repayment systems, and the ability to establish race-based student groups on campus (think Black Student Union).
As bad, the administration is significantly slashing federal funding for many universities, with many more institutions to be targeted, and is requiring any higher education institution that has any DEI program, initiative, or office (over a thousand do) to shut them down or lose funding.
Medicare and Medicaid: Although the administration claims that neither program will face cuts, it is evident from bills passed by both the Republican-led House and Senate that Medicaid will likely be subject to significant reductions to help finance substantial tax cuts primarily benefiting the wealthy.
Although a plurality (39.6%) of Whites are Medicaid recipients, Blacks are disproportionately represented at 20%, despite making up only 14% of the U.S. population. Therefore, cuts to Medicaid will certainly disproportionately impact African American recipients.
Immigration: The administration has proposed a travel ban for more than 40 nations. Some nations on the list, you’d expect to be included in a travel ban, such as Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Yemen. However, the list also includes countries like Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Pakistan, St. Lucia, Haiti, and several dozen others in East, Central, and West Africa. If it passes and remains in effect, it ensures the so-called browning of our nation will slow down.
Meanwhile, his administration has shut down dozens of refugee resettlement programs, making it nearly impossible for countless refugees from many nations to seek haven in the U.S. with one exception: encouraging White Afrikaners from South Africa to resettle in the U.S., a program Tr*mp calls Mission South Africa.
No programs for Hispanics, Asians, or Black Africans- only for White South Africans. This is the very definition of intentional, systemic discrimination.
The administration has also sought to reverse LBJ’s order to ensure equal opportunity in federal contracting to combat phantom “anti-White racism,” while also signing an order that no longer prohibits federal contractors from operating ‘segregated facilities.’
Is this how we take America back? Or how we make America great again?
Erasing Black History?
A second area I want to address is the administration’s attempts not only to halt progress on racial equity but to erase Black history in every area touched by the federal government. While earlier I discussed the reversal of significant strides made during the LBJ era, this attempt to, in Tr*mp’s terms, ‘eliminate anti-American ideology,’ could potentially take us even further back in U.S. history.
This is literally Jim Crow stuff, plain and simple: Let’s make America Whiter again.
What has happened thus far in Tr*mpLand that should cause great concern?
In late March, he issued an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History (just pause to consider that doublespeak),” aimed at eliminating “divisive narratives” from Smithsonian museums, including “by seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties.” It also called for reinstating “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that had been removed since his last day in office in his first term, which, according to the accompanying fact sheet, “perpetuate a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.”
The order suggests Tr*mp’s effort to satisfy the demands of the Far Right by reinstating Confederate statues, monuments, and memorials that were justly dismantled since the pandemic began. Tr*mp says their removals “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.”
The order should have been named ‘Reinforcing Falsehoods and Insanity to American History.’
The sheet also indicates that his administration will prohibit “funding for exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race, or promote ideologies inconsistent with Federal law.” (emphasis added)
Although the order applies to and targets all Smithsonian Institution’s properties, it also singled out, by name, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the most superb museums I have ever visited. Why? Because it supposedly has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” The museum is now in the administration’s crosshairs for simply telling truths rarely taught to most Americans. It doesn’t reconstruct American history; it finally airs uncomfortable history that, since the Civil War, has been intentionally discounted and rebuffed.
This order has implications that extend well beyond the Smithsonian. In Massachusetts, for example, its Museum of African American History (MAAH) lost federal funding last week because the grant it receives annually is “no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States.” It’s not a death blow for MAAH, but a 16% loss in funding creates a significant gap to fill in normal times and is particularly challenging in the current, chaotic, and deteriorating economic climate.
The museum of Massachusetts may be the first such museum known to lose federal funding, but there’s no doubt they won’t be the last.
How has Tr*mp accomplished this? By placing all of the employees of the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on paid administrative leave, with the ultimate intent of getting rid of all of them and closing it down.
The IMLS is an independent federal agency that funds museums and libraries.
The executive order follows previous directives banning words like equity, oppression, prejudice, systemic, and underprivileged from use in all federal agencies and requiring the removal of anything deemed “DEI” or “woke” from websites. This has led to the deletion of thousands of photos of diverse veterans from the Pentagon’s website, any mention of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, and all references to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Yes, you read that right.
Since these orders, the Naval Academy has released a list of 381 books that are no longer permitted on campus (see the list here from this gift link from the New York Times, https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/4146516/list-of-books-removed-from-usna-library/.) What books now make Academy leaders uncomfortable? For starters:
Memorializing the Holocaust by Janet Jacobs
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Long Time Coming – Reckoning with Race in America by Michael Ericc Dyson
The Rage of Innocence – How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning
White Too Long: the Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones
Plus, studies of the KKK and lynching
Plus 375 more.
This week the Air Force Academy and West Point (the Army’s academy) followed suit.
Let’s all remember one of Tr*mp’s first executive orders in January. It banned “DEI” materials in K-12 public schools.
All of these Trump orders extend the work of many state laws enacted after the 2020 racial reckoning, which led to restrictions on the discussion of slavery, critical race theory, or anything that might make White students uncomfortable. In fact, according to Education Week:
“Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis. Eighteen states are imposing these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues.”[3]
If Tr*mp and his brittle sycophants have their way, they will permanently suppress any public discussions about systemic racism and social justice.
Tr*mp is the federal government’s Mafia kingpin, trying to control his ‘goodfellas’ through strict hierarchy and intimidation. All important decisions must emanate from him, the ultimate authority.
His January 30th executive order, “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Government Service,” states that potential hires must not be employed unless they “faithfully serve the executive branch.”[4]
Mind you, federal employees have long been obligated to uphold the public trust and to place loyalty to the Constitution, laws, and ethical principles above personal gain, acting impartially in all their duties.
Loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law, not fealty to an unstable, fragile, and narcissistic president.
A second order, three weeks later, focused on agency accountability, states that “The Constitution vests all executive power in the president and charges him with faithfully executing the laws” and aims to effectively bypass any federal regulatory authority “without sufficient accountability to the president, and through him, to the American people.”[5]
These resemble directives from an unelected monarch, not a president who secured less than a majority (49.8%) of our most recent national election.
What does all this mean?
As Sofia Alva of The Reconstructionist Weekly writes, Tr*mp’s increasingly racist and authoritarian moves seek to “redefine racial progress as discrimination, paint equity as oppression, and spread an American narrative that erases the heroes and accomplishments of America’s multi-racial equitable democracy.”[6]
This isn’t a restoration of sanity. It is the latest in a long and repeated cycle of Whitelash against Black progress in our history, a profound attempt to, once again, whitewash American history. Any semblance of truth doesn’t seem to matter in this administration. Nor does due process. Or fundamental rights of citizens … or those with green cards or student visas.
Compared to other nations that have slid into authoritarianism, this administration is on a far more rapid glide path. Some leading scholars of authoritarianism have already left the country and others are making plans. They study this stuff. They know the pattern.
Unfortunately, so do the Tr*mpians.
We must all find ways to obstruct and divert the glide path.
Some Good News?
Last week, I wrote about localized forms of reparations. This week, I came across more.
In 2023, Washington state adopted a race-based remedy for past housing discrimination after identifying 50,000 house deeds that contained racially restrictive covenants preventing African Americans and other people of color from purchasing homes. “A broad coalition succeeded in getting the legislature to adopt the Covenant Homeownership Act to provide home buying assistance to non-white households to redress the segregation and inequality that these deeds (often governmentally sponsored) and other public policies had created.” The program created will have an annual budget of $100 million, which can provide as much as $50,000 in down payment assistance to 2,500 households annually.[7]
In Wilmington, Delaware, the city council received a report this month from a Reparations Taskforce it commissioned in 2019 to “address the historical and ongoing impacts of systemic racism and discrimination against African American residents. … [w]hile no specific timeline was provided for implementation, the council’s acceptance of the report marks a formal commitment to exploring the recommendations in depth.”[8]
The report focused on a wide range of systemic racism, including discrimination in housing, health disparities, restricted economic opportunities, and inequities in the criminal justice system. The city aims to follow in the footsteps of Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina, by making investments in reparations.
The Zacchaeus Foundation in Northeast Arkansas “provides a vehicle for white residents and predominantly white churches to invest in Black-led nonprofits as a form of reparations.”[9] (emphasis added) The foundation, led by White people wanting to repair truth, wealth, and power, raises funds and then asks Black residents to decide who receives the funds.
Who is Zacchaeus? I didn’t know. He was a biblical (and corrupt) tax collector who, once he encountered Jesus, gave away his ill-gotten gains to those he had stolen from. The foundation asks local, historically White churches to invest one percent of their budget annually for distribution to Black-led community groups. You can learn more about the foundation at Zacchaeus Foundation Link.
Finally, the House of Delegates in my state, Maryland, approved the creation of a statewide Reparations Commission this month to study and recommend “appropriate reparations, which could include statements of apology, monetary compensation, social service assistance, business incentives, and child care costs.”[10] for those impacted by historic inequalities. Maryland is the fourth state to establish a commission, following California, Illinois, and New York.
Footnotes
[1] Russell Contreras, “Trump's 2025 seeks to reverse LBJ's 1965,” Axios, March 22, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/03/22/trump-2025-reverse-lbj-1965-civil-rights-poverty.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sarah Schwartz, “Map: Where Critical Race Theory Is Under Attack,” Education Week, April 15, 2025, https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06.
[4] “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service,” The White House, January 30, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02094/reforming-the-federal-hiring-process-and-restoring-merit-to-government-service
[5] “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” The White House, February 24, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/24/2025-03063/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies.
[6] Sofia Alva, “The Reconstructionist Weekly: The Lost Cause of the Confederacy & the Attacks on DEI,” The Reconstructionist Weekly, March 31, 2025,
.
[7] Leah Rothstein, “Washington State adopts a race-based remedy for past housing discrimination,” Just Action, September 20, 2023,
.
[8] Claudia Estrada, “Wilmington Taskforce calls for action on racial injustices in recent report,” Town Square Live, April 8, 2025, https://townsquaredelaware.com/wilmington-taskforce-calls-for-action-on-racial-injustices-in-recent-report/.
[9] Robert P. Jones, “Talking about the "R Word" in the South,” White Too Long, March 26, 2025,
.
[10] William J. Ford, “House rejects GOP amendments, gives final approval to bill creating Reparations Commission,” Maryland Matters, April 3, 2025, https://marylandmatters.org/2025/04/03/house-rejects-gop-amendments-gives-final-approval-to-bill-creating-reparations-commission/.