Republicans and Black History Museums

This connection between Republicans having racist politics and supporting Black history museums for reasons of both money and smoothed over relationships with the Black community long predates Trump. For twenty years, white Republicans in the South have supported the creation of National Park Service sites of memorialization of Black history. It’s interesting that this continues even while Trump thinks that talking about Black people is anti-white racism:

North Carolina is spending $60 million to begin construction of a museum dedicated to the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. Texas has allocated $17 million for two Juneteenth museums to explore the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans.

Earlier this year, Florida lawmakers approved $1 million to begin planning the state’s first Black history museum.

Hoping to draw tourism dollars, Republicans in these GOP-dominated legislatures appear to be staking out a different position on the celebration of Black history than the one pushed by their party’s leader, President Donald Trump, who has called museums featuring exhibits on slavery and oppression “the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’”

The Trump administration has cut funding to small archives and museums across the country dedicated to Black history and ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, saying they overemphasize the negative aspects of American history.

Some of those tensions are reflected in the projects underway in the South. A woman helping to plan the Civil War museum in North Carolina quit last year because she felt organizers were too focused on “state’s rights,” and a Texas lawmaker pushing for a Juneteenth museum said it was important to recognize heroes who fought for freedom, as well as the horrors of slavery.

But those backing the new projects say they will be historically accurate, while also bringing jobs, visitors and major economic benefits to their states.

“I think this is going to be a tide that lifts all boats, it’s going be huge for economic development not just for St. Johns County but it’s going to be an asset for the entire state of Florida,” said St. Johns County Commissioner Sarah Arnold, a proponent of the Black history museum in that state. “People go to Orlando for the mouse, they go to South Beach to party, and they come to St. Augustine for history.”

In South Carolina, Black tourists drawn to the International African American Museum in Charleston and similar sites helped generate $2.4 billion a year in economic activity for the state, said Renee McDaniel-Newkirk, communications director for the African American Tourism Council. Next year, the South Carolina Civil Rights Museum in Orangeburg is moving to a new home, three times the size of its existing facility, after securing philanthropic grants and $250,000 from the Republican-controlled state General Assembly.

Naturally, it would be nice for these people to make any connections between teaching Black history and not being a scumbag in the present…..