President Trump is planning to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary as an “unapologetic” patriotic extravaganza, despite calls from historians and social justice advocates for a more somber reflection on America’s past.
Mr. Trump’s yearlong celebration kicks off with a Flag Day military parade in the nation’s capital on June 14 and includes creating a National Garden of Heroes and working with conservative Hillsdale College to produce “America 250” videos revering “the greatest republic to ever exist.”
“The American 250 Federation is committed to creating the largest, most inspiring and unifying commemoration in the nation’s history, providing an opportunity for all Americans to come together to honor our heroes and reflect on our shared heritage and future as a nation,” a White House official told The Washington Times.
Some historians and racial justice advocates, however, have called on the White House to use next year’s semiquincentennial to apologize for racism and slavery amid plans to commemorate the July 4, 1776, signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“What I and most professional historians would object to is ’unapologetic’ history, patriotic or otherwise,” said James Grossman, the outgoing executive director of the American Historical Association. “To apologize for the harms we have done to others is gracious, generous, and a good learning experience for all of us.”
Mr. Grossman urged the White House to treat America 250 like a secular version of Yom Kippur — the Jewish Day of Atonement that invites people “to reflect on our sins, to repent [and] to seek forgiveness.”
Anti-racism activists have insisted that America “began” when the first enslaved Africans came to the Virginia colony in 1619, not 1776.
“The idea that America began in 1776 ignores the reality that in 1619, enslaved Africans were brought to these shores against their will,” said Anneisha Hardy, executive director of the advocacy group Alabama Values. “America’s 250th birthday should be an opportunity for reckoning, reflection and truth-telling, not revisionism dressed in red, white and blue.”
“The 1619 Project,” a 2019 collection of essays in the New York Times, sparked a national debate over whether Americans should mark that year instead of 1776 as the nation’s starting point. Thousands of public schools have adopted the Pulitzer Prize-winning series in social studies classes, and Hulu adapted it for a streaming series in 2023.
And some museums featuring semiquincentennial exhibits have made an effort to reflect that position.
The Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond is exhibiting an original copy of Lord Dunmore’s November 1775 proclamation that offered freedom to Virginia slaves who fought for the crown — cited in “The 1619 Project” as evidence that America started as a racist nation.
Other institutions calling for a racial reckoning include the Council of American Maritime Museums, a nonprofit network that promotes an “inclusive interpretation of slavery” from the Revolutionary War times to modern times.
“For much of our history, the United States has excluded people — women, free and enslaved African Americans, Indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, the poor, and many others — from full participation and representation in the nation’s political, economic, and cultural life,” the council declared in a guidance document for America 250 exhibits.
Conservative scholars have pushed back against this framing of America as a racist nation, casting it as needlessly divisive.
Thousands of K-12 teachers have adopted or reviewed Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum as a conservative alternative to the left-leaning 1619 Project in recent years.
Wilfred McClay, an American historian at the Christian school’s main campus in Michigan, pledged to “withhold judgment” about America 250 displays until he sees them firsthand.
“No one is opposed to an inclusive approach to the past,” Mr. McClay said. “But doing it in the right way is another matter. The primary emphasis must be on the truly remarkable thing that was accomplished on July 4, 1776, rather than on what was not accomplished.”
Others take America’s founding back even further.
Connor Boyack, creator of the “Tuttle Twins” franchise, wrote a children’s history book series that starts with England enacting Magna Carta in 1215 as a precursor to Independence Day.
He said the bigger problem is professional historians promoting “a political goal of division and self-loathing” that reflects “a progressive agenda.”
“America has been suffering from an identity crisis,” Mr. Boyack said. “One portion of the country is proud of its heritage, despite its defects and problems. The other portion is ashamed of its past and refuses to recognize the good that came from people who also did bad things.”
Mr. Trump’s semiquincentennial plans focus on pride and achievement. The Flag Day parade through the District of Columbia will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army’s founding, which coincides with his own 79th birthday.
The parade will feature 6,700 soldiers marching alongside 370 howitzers, tanks and other vehicles as 50 military aircraft fly overhead. It will be the first military parade in the District since the first Gulf War ended in 1991.
Donald Critchlow, a U.S. historian and director of Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions, noted the impossibility of including all viewpoints in any historical presentation or commemoration.
“Museum exhibits are, by nature, selective,” Mr. Critchlow said. “So while inclusion should be welcomed, Americans are tired of inclusion for inclusion’s sake.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.