A Great Nation Does Not Hide its History

The National Museum of African American History and American Culture opened in 2016, is proudly situated on D.C.’s National Mall. The museum spares no effort in documenting and displaying all facets of the Black experience in America, to include the institution and experience of slavery. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all equally on display, encouraging all visitors to draw their own conclusions.

Among the speakers at the opening was Former President George W. Bush, who had these words for the assembled crowd:

 “A great nation does not hide its history; it faces its flaws and corrects them.”

Now, cut to 2020. Over the past several weeks, angry mobs have destroyed and defaced historical statues in an attempt to “right history.” Oddly enough, statues of individuals who had no connection whatsoever to the institution of slavery were removed or vandalized. In fact, a statue of my ancestor Matthias Baldwin, standing at the northwest corner of City Hall Philadelphia, was vandalized even though, as a committed abolitionist, he established a school in the city for Black children. If this makes sense to you, please tell me how.

Historical records show that very few residents of the valley were slaveowners or fought to preserve slavery. The German and Scots-Irish farmers who settled here were philosophically opposed to slavery, and put their large families to work on their small farms. But while slavery will forever stain our past, it is a part of the American experience that no American of good conscience would deny or paper over. Yet, many seem to think that if the iconography of history can be erased, the actual past will go away with it.

It’s not just happening here. On June 6, a statue of Abraham Lincoln in London’s Parliament Square was defaced and vandalized. His connection to American slavery is probably not how the vandals’ leaders described it. These monuments erected long ago to honor a dying generation of southern Civil War veterans is offensive to a portion of our population. I get that. So, is re-writing history the answer? Do we change the story to give it a happy ending?  That is not only a futile task, but a slap in the face to people trying their best to use that history to heal America’s racial divide.

How shall we deal with monuments to men such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were slaveowners but were also responsible for the founding of this great republic? Do we obliterate their memory and vital role in our history by removing all their images and stories, and pretending they never lived or died?

The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland was the largest Nazi concentration camp and extermination center. Over 1.1 million men, women and children were cruelly murdered there. If ever there was a symbol of pure evil that merited being bulldozed it was Auschwitz. Yet it stands today and is visited by thousands. Why does it stand? Because its best use is as a reminder of the real history that was the Holocaust - Adolf Hitler’s mad attempt to destroy the Jewish race.

In 2019, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Auschwitz and remarked, “Remembering the crimes ... is a responsibility which never ends. It belongs inseparably to our country. To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society.”

Readers may also recall ISIS’s crazed attempt to destroy all vestiges of ancient Christian imagery and edifices because that particular slice of history did not fit their view of the world. As hard as they tried, they could not erase history. History may be brutal, ugly, or merely politically incorrect, but it is the unpleasant history from which we stand to learn the most. For decades, Japanese schoolchildren could not read about World War II in their history textbooks, because it cast Japan in a bad light. Years of worldwide condemnation and ridicule finally changed that situation. Is the US ready to head down that same shameful path?

We all learn, from the examples of others, to face our challenges head-on, acknowledge our failings and move forward. Pretending bad times and bad things never happened does nothing to “correct” our history, much less our future behavior. As Americans we are still better than that. Future generations of Americans will thank us for the honesty we show in preserving and learning from our past rather than covering it up.