Posted by Tina
Black Christian News, “New African American History Museum Gives More Attention to Anita Hill than Justices Clarence Thomas or Thurgood Marshall”
What were they thinking? This is a disgrace but I’m afraid it’s indicative of education in America today. I’d bet a fortune, if I had one, that the Anita Hill history is a whitewashing of the hearings Democrats held to target and destroy Justice Clarence Thomas. That’s bad enough but to leave out the personal stories of both Justices, Marshall and Thomas, is an affront to the historical record of black Americans. It is an attempt to create history politically rather than record it accurately. I’m disgusted.
A museum of black history should feature the oppression and mistreatment of blacks and the lingering discrimination that continued after the slaves were freed. But it should also feature the truth that blacks owned black slaves and that free black men and women played significant and prominent roles in our history. Wikipedia notes that “In 1790, there were more than 59,000 free Blacks in the United States. By 1810, that number had risen to 186,446.” It should highlight the early creation of black colleges and the black people of prominence that came out of these colleges, educators, lawyers, senators and doctors. It should feature the black inventors…and it should certainly tell the personal stories of the two black men who rose through difficult times and circumstances to sit on this nations highest court.
A museum should be a showcase of the historical record not a side show for political opinion and narratives. Americans will never be able to move on as long as the history of blacks in America is limited to featuring blacks solely as the victims of slavery. It’s wrong to deprive black children, all children, a full and rich accounting of black history in the U.S. I would have thought the Smithsonian would do better.