Janine Jackson interviewed the African American Coverage Discussion board’s Tanya Clay Home about erasing historical past for the May 2, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. It is a calmly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Historians, lecturers, neighborhood leaders and racial justice advocates are rallying across the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, because the Trump White Home has set its destructive sights on it as a part of the trouble to erase Black history from US historical past, to claim that any correct acknowledgement of Black folks’s lives on this nation “deepens societal, divides and fosters a way of nationwide disgrace, disregarding the progress America has made.”
We’ve heard this track earlier than. There are few extra radical methods to oppress folks than to suppress their historical past, their experiences, their voices, to insist that solely ever extra fantastic issues have occurred in the US, and that solely that fairytale is appropriate to inform or to listen to. The hurt wrought—and, to be clear, supposed—isn’t just to Black folks, however to the very idea, the aspiration of multiracial democracy.
Which is why the Freedom to Learn community, and its #HandsOffOurHistory marketing campaign, comprise so many teams and communities. The coalition was convened by the African American Policy Forum, the place our visitor is senior strategist, and the place I function a board member.
Tanya Clay Home has labored for years on supporting democracy by supporting communities of colour’s proper to vote, together with work with the American Bar Affiliation, the Hip Hop Caucus and the Kairos Democracy Project, in addition to as an impartial guide. She joins us now by cellphone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tanya Clay Home.
Tanya Clay Home: Thanks a lot for having me. I recognize it.
JJ: I simply noticed Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, from the African American Coverage Discussion board, doing a type of video minute about Bruce’s Beach, a California property the place Black households had been residing within the ’20s—too fortunately for the likes of their white neighbors, who had the town seize the land below eminent area, saying it’d be used for a public park, after which leaving it undeveloped as soon as they’d achieved the plain aim of driving the Black folks out.
That’s simply among the taste of this kaleidoscopic venture. Inform us extra about what #HandsOffOurHistory and Freedom to Study are doing, and hoping to do.
TCH: Thanks a lot for this chance to discuss this. So we’re at a time—and I hesitate to say it is a essential time; it’s been essential for a very long time—there are issues which might be occurring inside our nation that many perhaps by no means thought would come again, as a result of we thought we had at the least advanced on a sure degree to not interact in revisionist historical past, to not go backward in direction of the instances once we are qualifying folks primarily based upon their pores and skin colour, that we’re persevering with to demean and to interact in actions that basically undermine the worth of individuals, tradition, as a way to stoke concern, as a way to keep energy of, basically, the white majority.
Sadly, we’re at the moment level, at that place once more, the place we’re basically this technology’s civil rights motion. Now we have a coalition of organizations that convened about three years in the past below the Freedom to Study banner, as a way to actually converse out in opposition to the start phases of making an attempt to eradicate our historical past.
The push to eliminate African-American studies and pull out certain teachings, significantly Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s teachings, inside African-American research programs, this had moved through Florida and all the best way up by College Board standards, and there was a galvanizing of organizations as a way to push again on what we noticed occurring, as a result of it was undermining the power of scholars to study their historical past.
So we got here collectively three years in the past, after which once more final yr below the identical banner, as a result of book bans had advanced, e-book bans throughout the nation in each state, and we had been actually making an attempt to boost the specter and convey it to folks’s consideration, what that is doing, coming after the tradition, and coming after freedom of thought.
And this was really the playbook of Project 2025, and now, sadly, one other yr later, we live Undertaking 2025. We live what that playbook, of not solely the e-book ban, not solely the erasure, the undermining of African-American research programs, however the direct focused assaults on all issues range, fairness and inclusion, which is admittedly one other manner of concentrating on Blackness, and concentrating on these which might be different, making an attempt to different folks, and saying that, actually, this nation shouldn’t be inclusive; actually, it’s only that for the white majority.
And so Freedom to Study is admittedly targeted. We acknowledge that it could possibly now not simply be a day—we had been galvanizing on sooner or later yearly—but in addition to proceed that drumbeat. However this yr, we had a complete week, Freedom to Learn Week of Action. And it’s due to, you talked about the chief order that’s particularly concentrating on Black historical past, and the Black museum talked about and referred to as out is the Nationwide Museum for African-American and Tradition, in any other case referred to as the Black Smithsonian, right here in DC, but in addition Black museums throughout the nation.
And so we’re galvanizing and bringing folks collectively to elevate up all the issues that I’ve mentioned, and to actually concentrate on what that is doing to our nation, and the way it’s utterly undermining the liberty of thought, how it’s basically partaking in replacement theory, and the way we’re in want of a motion to make sure that we don’t repeat the sins of our previous.
JJ: I get pissed off when information media say “the White Home is searching for to undermine Black research, Black museums and cultural establishments.” And, to start with, that that’s one way or the other within the curiosity of “ending divisions.” I don’t know the way you even kind the phrases that Donald Trump needs to finish divisions.
However then, the concept that one way or the other it’s solely Black people who find themselves harmed, or solely Black individuals who care, once we’re speaking about historical past and, as you say, freedom of thought in its essence. That is of curiosity, or needs to be of concern, to completely everybody.
TCH: You’re completely proper. Our slogan and its hashtag is #HandsOffOurHistory, as a result of Black historical past is American historical past, it’s all of our historical past, and it’s essential to grasp how this nation’s advanced. You’ll be able to take a look at the failures of America in a technique as, OK, these are the challenges, these are the issues, these are the atrocities that America has engaged in, however it’s also possible to say, it’s additionally what we’ve overcome, or are trying to beat, and transfer ahead on.
And so for those who take a look at it solely as the best way that this administration is stating, that it’s a divisive idea, that’s the concern of acknowledging the previous, and the place America has come from, and the beliefs that they’ve been making an attempt to realize. It’s not acknowledging all the nice evolution and the work that folks have been engaged in, as a way to obtain the beliefs which might be ingrained inside our Structure, which might be ingrained inside the American psyche, of freedom and liberty, freedom of thought, that individuals are created equal and have equal alternative. The truth is, this administration appears to be utterly counter to that, and never wanting others, solely wanting a sure section of this inhabitants, to truly be free, basically.
And in order that’s why they’re concentrating on, and stating that something that interrupts or upsets that energy dynamic of these which might be at present in energy, that subsequently it’s thought of divisive. And the primary goal proper now, significantly, is Black historical past. And Black historical past, although, for those who don’t perceive and also you don’t study it, all individuals are at an obstacle, as a result of that can be a essential part of how it’s that our civil rights infrastructure has been established, and the way we guarantee protections for all folks, for ladies, for LGBTQ People, for Latinos, for Asians, for anybody who shouldn’t be a white majority. So I believe that merely declaring in a press release that it’s a divisive idea is ignorant, is the perfect that I can say at this level.
JJ: And I believe that there are many white individuals who additionally would say, We additionally need to study the historical past of this nation, the true historical past of this nation. Please don’t converse in our title and say you’re defending us from it, as a result of it’s really a part of what white folks have to study, and need to study as effectively.
I don’t know if in case you have any explicit ideas about reporting. Aside from USA At the moment‘s Deborah Barfield Berry, and lots of of us at a neighborhood degree, I haven’t seen a lot consideration to Freedom to Study. However a part of what I’m studying is how a lot you may develop and keep wholesome traces of communication outdoors and across the information media narrative. The Banned Books Tour that you just referenced went straight to varsities and campuses, and arrange store and spoke on to folks. However media protection can nonetheless assist or harm in some methods.
TCH: Yeah. We all know that there must be a groundswell in native communities as effectively, that it’s not going to be, as was stated in a different context, “the revolution is not going to be broadcast.” Now we have to be on the bottom, partaking in one-on-one contact, and that’s what we’re doing in some ways. The Freedom to Learn Week of Action this yr is about entering into communities and giving folks methods to interact at their native degree, to acquire a digital library card that offers younger folks entry to all the books which were banned.
And that’s tons of, tons of of books which were banned. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, studying about Ruby Bridges, To Kill a Mockingbird. These are readings that I grew up on, studying and understanding America, and it actually helped to gauge, and to direct how I understood, how this may very well be within the society. Our kids now don’t have entry to that.
So we’ve got the digital library playing cards that folks can have there without cost. Now we have each library. We’re partnering with them on sending letters to the editor, to your native papers, talking to the truth that that is our historical past, Black historical past, it’s all of our historical past. That you simply’re really partaking in revisionist historical past by making an attempt to erase and never speak about what has occurred prior to now. As a result of for those who do this, you’re not going to study from it.
Tonya Clay Home: “This administration is intent on repeating the sins of the previous, which is why they don’t need folks to find out about what occurred prior to now.”
And in reality, what we consider is occurring is that this administration is intent on repeating the sins of the previous, which is why they don’t need folks to find out about what occurred prior to now.
Now we have different methods through which we’re additionally partaking. We’re telling folks to make your individual video. Such as you talked about, Dr. Crenshaw uplifted the historic websites which might be in your individual neighborhood, that you could be not learn about as a result of issues are being eliminated. It’s not simply monuments, however historic land properties, artifacts as we’ve been listening to about, issues that always are on mortgage in several museums. When you can elevate that up, take a selfie of your self, #HandsOffOurHistory. That’s the tagline.
We’ve obtained quite a few other ways through which we’re partaking and wanting folks to uplift, however significantly on Could 3, for those who’re right here within the DC space, we’re encouraging folks to come back be part of us, as a result of we’re going to be gathering collectively on the steps of the John Wilson Constructing to talk to this subject of erasure, and the way we’re going to reaffirm Black historical past. Now we have a Black history affirmation that we’ve got on our Freedom to Study web site, and we’ve got civil rights leaders from throughout the nation and regionally as effectively, in addition to staff of the Smithsonian and others which might be going to be talking, religion leaders. We’re all coming collectively and we’re saying, fingers off our historical past, and we need to present that we’re not going to permit this to occur, as a result of that is all of our historical past.
And so we do need everyone to take a second. There are methods that everyone can do only one factor, at the least one thing. And everyone might not have the ability to do the marches, or not have the ability to do, perhaps, the video. However perhaps you will get the digital library card, or perhaps you may give cash. There are other ways through which folks can interact, and we’re making an attempt to provide you all of the methods that can assist you do this.
JJ: All proper, then. We’ll finish on that notice of participation. We’ve been talking with Tanya Clay Home, guide and senior strategist on the African American Coverage Discussion board, amongst many different issues. Tanya Clay Home, thanks a lot for becoming a member of us this week on CounterSpin.
TCH: Actually recognize it, thanks for having me.
