A new interest in Black history is rising in red, red, red states across the former Confederacy, from Florida to Texas. Supporting this push to build institutions to preserve the history of African Americans is a surprising group of officials, state legislators of the same party as the president, who has denounced critical race theory and what he mislabels “woke” exhibits.
State legislatures in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Texas have allocated millions of dollars to create new Black history museums or expand existing ones, according to the Washington Post. Its illuminating report contrasts official Republican support for those institutions, even in Florida where the legislature has banned critical race theory, to President Trump’s retro attitude toward Black history.
Lawmakers have allocated $60 million to the North Carolina History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction in Fayetteville, where a groundbreaking for the museum was held recently.
In South Carolina, $5.3 million from the state is going to an expansion of the museum at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park on Hilton Head Island.
Earlier this year, Florida lawmakers approved $1 million to begin planning the state’s first Black history museum, to be built in historic St. Augustine Beach.
Texas is planning two new museums to honor Juneteenth, one in Galveston and another in Fort Worth, and has set aside millions to get started. Galveston is where a Union general signed the historic order declaring Texas slaves free, and Fort Worth was home to the Black woman who long advocated for a federal holiday that became a reality in 2021.
What accounts for this Southern trend running counter to negative vibrations emanating from the White House?
“State leaders see the dollars in Black cultural tourism and they’re capitalizing on it,” Renee McDaniel-Newkirk, communications director for the African American Tourism Council in South Carolina, told the Post.
Isn’t that curious? Southern lawmakers with similar ideological stripes as Trump see economic benefits from promoting Black history.
The president, whose analysis of most issues runs to the financial bottom line, somehow doesn’t see one when it comes to, for instance, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History in Culture. Last year, 1.6 million people visited the museum. Admission is free, but those visitors dropped some dollars in the nation’s capital on their way to and from the museum.
Trump’s Southern partisans are showing there’s an ideology behind his efforts to whitewash or erase Black history. It’s called racism.
Now, there are Black leaders in those four Southern states who worry the new museums won’t tell the whole, unvarnished story. They are right to be concerned. But once the museums are built, curators can change and exhibits can change. So too can the federal government’s attitude towards Black history.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
