By April D. Ryan
Washington Bureau Chief
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE β Black Press USA has learned that Trump officials are sending back exhibit items to their rightful owners and dismantling themβstarting with the 1960 Woolworthβs lunch counter sit-in exhibit.
βThis president is a master of distraction and is destroying what it took 250 years to build. Hereβs another distraction in his quest for attention. Another failure of his first 100 days,β said North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams, responding to efforts to physically remove the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworthβs lunch counter exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Cultureβaffectionately known as the βBlacksonian.β
The exhibit features portions of the original lunch counter and highlights the story of four Black male students from North Carolina A&T who were brutally attacked after sitting at the whites-only counter Feb. 1, 1960. When denied service, the students refused to leave. Their defiance ignited a wave of lunch counter sit-ins across the South and became a major flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement.
Adams added, βWe are long past the time when you can erase historyβanyoneβs history. You can take down exhibits, close buildings, take down websites, ban books, and try to change history, but we are long past that point. We will never forget!β
Black Press USA has also obtained a letter from Dr. Amos Brown, long-standing civil rights leader and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Franciscoβalso known as the home church of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The letter notifies Dr. Brown that the museum is returning a Bible and George W. Williamsβs History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880, one of the first books on racism in the U.S. Black Press USA has obtained emails from April 10 and 15, 2025, confirming the transfer.
The excerpt obtained by Black Press USA reads:
Dear Reverend Brown,
βI wanted to alert you that the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will be returning your Bible and book we borrowed for our exhibition, Segregation.β (Email to Dr. Amos Brown)
These artifacts have been on display since the museumβs opening in September 2016. Dr. Brown has confirmed he will accept their return.
For Dr. Amos Brown, the artifacts meant something.
βThose two books and the summary of my civil rights activism and my picture right there next to Medgar Evers, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth in the desegregation of civil rights exhibitβ¦ That book [History of the Negro Race in America] inspired me before there were even African studies published. In my home, in that 3rd Street Baptist Church, we studied that book. The Bibleβthatβs my fatherβs Bible and the Bible I used in the Civil Rights Movement. When we went on demonstrations, we always had the Bible.β
While civil rights leaders are seeing their history returned behind the scenes, other actors are influencing the future of national memory.
Attorney Lindsey Halligan is reportedly consulting Vice President JD Vance to βremove improper ideologyβ from Smithsonian properties. According to a recentΒ Washington PostΒ article, Halligan told Trump the Smithsonian needs βchanging,β and he has since ordered her to act.
Halligan stated, βI would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history. We donβt need to overemphasize the negative to teach people that certain aspects of our nationβs history may have been bad.β That overemphasis, she argued, βjust makes us grow further and further apart.β
Emails from April 10 and 152025
