On August 19, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social expressing his dissatisfaction with the Smithsonian museums and their coverage of American history, particularly their treatment of slavery. In his post, Trump wrote:
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE’. The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
Trump announced that he had “instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made,” concluding that “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the “HOTTEST” Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
This statement came as part of the Trump administration’s broader review of Smithsonian exhibitions, aimed at removing what they deemed “divisive or ideologically driven” content while promoting exhibits that “celebrate American exceptionalism.” The White House had already initiated a formal review of eight major Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, requiring them to make “content corrections” within 120 days.
Contrary to Trump’s characterization that museums focus too much on “how bad slavery was,” the historical record reveals that slavery constituted one of the most brutal and dehumanizing systems in human history.
While no one article can contain all the information about how inhumane enslaving people was, museums often educate peple about some of the following facts:
Between 1501 and 1867, approximately 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean, with only about 10.7 million surviving the journey.
The Middle Passage alone claimed between 1.2 and 2.4 million lives. Mortality rates during the ocean crossing ranged from 10-25 percent, with an estimated 15-19 percent of all captives dying during the voyage. This means that nearly two million people died during the Middle Passage—”nearly one million more than all of the Americans who have died in every war fought since 1775 combined (Equal Justice Initiative).”
Enslaved people were packed into spaces sometimes less than five feet high, chained together, and forced to lie in their own waste for weeks. The holds were filled with “urine, vomit, mucous, and horrific odors.”
Sexual assault of African women was systematic and commonplace during the Middle Passage. Sailors were permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, with records documenting the rape of girls as young as eight to ten years old. Those who resisted were subjected to brutal torture, including forced feeding.
One of slavery’s most devastating aspects was its hereditary nature, established through the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem (“that which is born follows the womb”). Beginning with Virginia’s 1662 law, colonial governments mandated that children born to enslaved mothers would automatically inherit their mother’s enslaved status.
Colonial lawmakers adopted Roman principles applied to livestock, legally treating enslaved women “as animals, such that the children of Black women were deemed the property of their owner.”
This law ensured that slavery would be self-perpetuating. By the Civil War, over one million of the four million enslaved people in America were children under sixteen. These children were denied the most basic human rights, such as freedom, safety, protection from degrading and cruel treatment, compensation for work done, education, equality and the right to freely move around.
Enslaved children were valuable property who could be bought, sold, maimed or killed. They were regularly separated from their families through sale, with approximately 30 percent of all slave children born in the upper South between 1820 and 1860 being taken from their families and sold to the Deep South.
The systematic separation of families was used both as punishment and for profit. Enslaved people lived in constant fear that their children, spouses, or parents could be sold away at any moment.
The violence inflicted on enslaved people was not random cruelty but systematic torture designed to maintain control through terror. Enslaved people were subjected to what should properly be called torture, including whipping, branding, sexual assault, burning, lynching and other torturous methods. As Frederick Douglass noted, “all the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more frequently, in the United States of America.”
Enslaved people typically worked from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, in conditions that were deliberately harsh and dehumanizing. On plantations, the workday began before dawn and continued until after dark, with only brief breaks for meals. During harvest seasons, particularly for cotton and sugar, enslaved people worked in shifts up to 18 hours a day.
The majority of enslaved people labored in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco fields under the constant supervision of overseers who used violence to maintain productivity.
Enslaved people who worked in plantation houses experienced different but equally oppressive conditions. House workers lived under constant surveillance, with no clear distinction between work and personal time.
Most enslaved people lived in cramped, poorly constructed cabins with dirt floors and minimal furniture, often just a bed, table and bench. These quarters were deliberately kept in poor condition as another form of control and dehumanization.
Enslaved people received inadequate nutrition, with diets heavily based on starchy foods like sweet potatoes and corn, lacking essential nutrients. Analysis of skeletal remains shows that enslaved workers suffered from malnutrition. During times of crisis, such as the American Revolution, when food imports were disrupted, hundreds of enslaved people died from starvation.
Beyond whipping, enslaved people faced branding with their owner’s initials, heavy chains, iron muzzles, thumb screws, and other devices designed to inflict maximum pain. Some punishments were designed to permanently maim, including “nose slit” and “loss of limb.”
Enslaved women’s reproductive capacity was treated as valuable property. Enslavers established designated spaces for intercourse and forced enslaved people into sexual relationships to produce children who would become property. Some plantation mistresses operated “Negro lodges” where enslaved women were prostituted and subjected to group sexual assaults.
Doctors routinely used enslaved women as experimental subjects, conducting surgeries without anesthesia based on the racist belief that Black women felt less pain than white women. These medical experiments often involved repeated surgeries and resulted in permanent disability or death.
Enslaved people were systematically denied education, with laws making it illegal to teach them to read or write.
The practice of enslaving people drove the economic prospects of every aspect of American society. Slavery generated enormous wealth that fueled America’s rise as a global economic power. Cotton production alone, built on enslaved labor, propelled the United States into a position as one of the leading economies in the world. By the Civil War, the Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita than any other region.
Major American financial institutions were deeply involved in slavery. Banks accepted enslaved people as collateral for loans, and when borrowers defaulted, banks became slaveowners themselves. JP Morgan Chase acknowledged that two of its predecessor banks accepted approximately 13,000 slaves as collateral for loans and ended up owning approximately 1,250 of them.
Much of Nazi Germany’s model for the Holocaust came from what the United States did to immigrants. Still, some of what the United States did was deemed going too far, even for Nazi Germany.
Despite systematic oppression, enslaved people maintained and created rich cultural traditions that sustained their humanity and resistance.
In the face of family separation, enslaved people created extended kinship networks that went beyond blood relations. Collective child-rearing was common to ensure children had care even when parents were sold away.
They also formed “multiple, overlapping, mutually reinforcing communities” based on work, family, religion, and neighborhood connections. These networks provided emotional support, shared resources, and collective resistance strategies.
Perhaps most importantly, enslaved people maintained their humanity through acts of love, creativity, and mutual support.
