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ACTUALLY, SLAVERY WAS VERY BAD  
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Clint Smith
August 22, 2025
The Atlantic
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_ The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled
attempt to erase Black history. _

, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
History and Culture

 

In what looks to be an intensifying quest to reshape American history
and scholarship according to his own preferences, President Donald
Trump this week targeted the Smithsonian Institution, the national
repository of American history and memory. Trump seemed outraged, in
particular, by the Smithsonian’s portrayal of the Black experience
in America. He took to Truth Social
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complain that the country’s museums “are, essentially, the last
remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian,” he wrote, “is
OUT OF CONTROL.” Then Trump wrote something astonishing, even for
him. He asserted that the narrative presented by the Smithsonian is
overly focused on “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was,
and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

Before continuing, it is important to pause a moment and state this
directly: Donald Trump, the current president of the United States,
believes that the Smithsonian is failing to do its job, because it
spends too much time portraying slavery as “bad.”

After reading his post, I thought of the historian Lonnie Bunch, the
current secretary of the Smithsonian—the first Black person to lead
the institution since its founding in 1846—and the founding director
of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and
Culture. In his 2016 speech
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the grand opening of the museum, Bunch thanked Barack Obama and George
W. Bush for their support. “We are at this moment because of the
backing of the United States Congress and the White House,” he said,
turning to them both onstage. It’s sobering to consider how
different things are today.

Bunch has been fighting efforts by the Trump administration to bring
the Smithsonian into conformity with the MAGA vision of American
history, and people familiar with his views say he is committed to
protecting the intellectual integrity and independence of the
Smithsonian. But how much longer, given Trump’s ever more
antagonistic position, will Bunch be able to withstand the
presidential pressure? On Truth Social, Trump said 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.” A recent letter
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the Smithsonian from the White House states that the review will be
completed and a final report issued by early 2026, in time for the
nation’s 250th anniversary, “to ensure alignment with the
President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism.”

Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not
only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only
because I was born and raised in New Orleans
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which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also
because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand
this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the
truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which
lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation
for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.

In 2021, I published a book
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how we remember slavery. I have spent years reading the first-person
accounts of formerly enslaved people discussing the myriad horrors
they endured—the journey across the Middle Passage, the abuse, the
sexual violence, the psychological terror, the family separations. It
is worth taking the time, in light of the president’s recent words,
to revisit some of these accounts.

In 1789, Olaudah Equiano published _The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African_._ _His book
was one of the first autobiographies ever published by a formerly
enslaved person, and it laid the groundwork for a new genre of
literature that would transform what people around the world
understood about slavery. Equiano had been kidnapped from what is now
Nigeria and marched for several months to the coast of West Africa.
One of the most devastating scenes in his book describes the sadism
of the Middle Passage
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The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the
number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room
to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious
perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from
a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the
slaves, of which many died … The shrieks of the women, and the
groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost
inconceivable.

The conditions were so bad, he writes, that some of the captives flung
themselves overboard:

One day, when we had a smooth sea, and a moderate wind, two of my
wearied countrymen, who were chained together (I was near them at the
time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through
the nettings, and jumped into the sea: immediately another quite
dejected fellow, who, on account of his illness, was suffered to be
out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more
would soon have done the same, if they had not been prevented by the
ship’s crew.

Once they arrived on American shores, men, women, and children were
forced onto auction blocks where families were broken apart. Once
separated, most would never see one another again.

Henry Bibb, born enslaved in Kentucky, writes in his 1849
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After the men were all sold they then sold the women and children.
They ordered the first woman to lay down her child and mount the
auction block; she refused to give up her little one and clung to it
as long as she could, while the cruel lash was applied to her back for
disobedience. She pleaded for mercy in the name of God. But the child
was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart
rending-shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and bitter
oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other. Finally the poor
little child was torn from the mother while she was sacrificed to the
highest bidder.

When the captives arrived at the home or plantation of their enslaver,
many of them were forced to work in sweltering fields with hardly any
respite. Their days began early. Austin Steward, born enslaved in
Virginia, writes in his 1857 book
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It was the rule for the slaves to rise and be ready for their task by
sun-rise, on the blowing of a horn or conch-shell; and woe be to the
unfortunate, who was not in the field at the time appointed, which was
in thirty minutes from the first sounding of the horn. I have heard
the poor creatures beg as for their lives, of the inhuman overseer, to
desist from his cruel punishment.

On the plantation, enslaved people were denied any physical autonomy,
and were subjected to torturous, and often arbitrary, violence at the
hands of overseers and enslavers. As William Coleman, born in
Tennessee around 1853, recalled as part of an interview
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the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s:

I’se seen the slaves whipped for nothing, but then if they did do
something to be whipped for they were almost killed before Maser would
quit working on them … One time one of the slaves was helping
Mistress there in the yard and he passed too close to her as he was
hurrying fast as he could, and sort of bumped into her. She never paid
him no attention, but Maser saw him and he let him go on ahead and
finish what he was doing then he called that poor negro to him and
took him out in the pasture, tied his hands together, throwed the
other end of the rope over a limb on a tree and pulled that negro’s
hands up in the air to where that negro had to stand on his tiptoes,
and Maser he took all that negro’s clothes off and whipped him with
that rawhide whip until that negro was plum bloody all over. Then he
left that poor negro tied there all the rest of the day and night.

Enslaved Black women were particularly vulnerable to insidious and
unrelenting sexual violence at the hands of their enslavers. In his
1857 book
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William Anderson, born enslaved in Virginia, describes
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My master often went to the house, got drunk, and then came out to the
field to whip, cut, slash, curse, swear, beat and knock down several,
for the smallest offense, or nothing at all.

He divested a poor female slave of all wearing apparel, tied her down
to stakes, and whipped her with a handsaw until he broke it over her
naked body. In process of time he ravished her person and became the
father of a child by her.

The constant threat of such violence took an immense psychological
toll on those who were subjected to it. Harriet Jacobs, born enslaved
in North Carolina, writes
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her 1861 book, _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_:

He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in
all things … The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out
of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you
would willingly believe … My master met me at every turn, reminding
me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he
would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh
air after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt
by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The
light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad
forebodings.

The consequences of being caught in an attempted escape were so severe
that most enslaved people never dared try. In Solomon Northup’s 1853
memoir, _Twelve Years a Slave_, he describes watching
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happened to an enslaved man who ran away and then was captured several
weeks later:

Wiley was stripped, and compelled to endure one of those inhuman
floggings to which the poor slave is so often subjected. It was the
first and last attempt of Wiley to run away. The long scars upon his
back, which he will carry with him to the grave, perpetually remind
him of the dangers of such a step.

Even after slavery was formally abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment
in 1865, the pain the institution wrought on the country’s 4 million
freedmen and freedwomen continued to reverberate. Throughout the late
19th century, newly emancipated Black people used newspapers
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had been separated from many years before. _The Christian
Recorder _published this ad
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1865:

INFORMATION WANTED

Of my mother and father, Caroline and Issac Denna; also, my sisters,
Fanny, Jane and Betsy Denna, and my brothers, Robert R., Hugh Henry,
and Philander Denna. We were born in Fauquier Co, Va. In 1849 they
were taken from the plantation of Josiah Lidbaugh, in said county, and
carried to Winchester to be sold. About the same time I left my home
in Clark Co, and have not heard from them since. The different
ministers of Christian churches will do a favor by announcing the
above, and any information will be gladly received by GEO. HENRY
DENNA, Galva, Henry Co.

For many, the search meant trying to find someone they hadn’t seen
for decades. Nancy Jones published this ad
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years after she had last seen her son:

INFORMATION WANTED of my son, Allen Jones. He left me before the war,
in Mississippi. He wrote me a letter in 1853 in which letter he said
that he was sold to the highest bidder, a gentleman in Charleston,
S.C. Nancy Jones, his mother, would like to know the whereabouts of
the above named person.

Whether mother and son were ever reunited is unknown.

None of us can imagine what it is like to be subjected to the
unremitting physical, psychological, and social violence of chattel
slavery. But museums such as the National Museum of African American
History and Culture bring us closer to being able to do so by sharing
first-person accounts of those who lived through that terrible
violence. At these museums, we see the garments enslaved people wore,
the tools they used, the structures in which they lived. We see their
faces; we hear their voices.

Clint Smith: Telling the truth about slavery is not
‘indoctrination’
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The NMAAHC, in particular, is unflinching in its characterization of
slavery as an unequivocally evil system, one whose impact continues to
be felt across our society. In 1860, the 4 million enslaved Black
people were worth more than every bank, factory, and railroad
combined. Today, although they make up 14 percent of the population,
Black people own less than 4 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Still, the museum also makes clear that the Black American experience
is not _singularly _defined by slavery, but also by the art,
literature, and cultural traditions that have emerged from, and in
spite of, centuries of interpersonal and structural violence. These
are not mutually exclusive, and the NMAAHC understands that Americans
should learn about both.

And yet the MAGA movement wants to tell a story about America that is
disproportionately focused on what its proponents perceive to be the
exceptionalism of this country. They are invested in this story
because having to look too closely at the disturbing parts of American
history would mean having to look closely at the disturbing parts of
themselves. But instead of ignoring the shameful parts of our past,
shouldn’t we—as individuals and as a country—want to learn from
aspects of our history that we are not proud of? What other way is
there to become the version of ourselves that we aspire to be?

The Trump administration is, in both public discourse and public
policy, arguably the most racist presidential administration in modern
American history. Each week seems to bring a new example of its
bigotry. I am sometimes tempted, upon encountering yet another
instance of this omnipresent racial antagonism, to let it be. How many
ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet, we must
write it down, if for nothing else, then for the sake of those who
will come after us. I think of Frederick Douglass
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about the monstrousness of slavery even when the idea of abolition
seemed preposterous to most Americans. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about
how the nation must hold on to the values of Reconstruction
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after federal soldiers marched out of the former Confederacy and
abandoned Black southerners. Ida B. Wells wrote about the lynchings
taking place throughout the South even as fresh bodies were still
swinging from the trees. Their words were essential because they
remind us that some Americans did bear witness to, and stand against,
these atrocities.

This is part of the reality of Black life in this country: We must
make a record of those forces that seek to erase us and erase our
histories so that future generations know we did not simply accept it.
Our ancestors’ words remind us that we never have.

CLINT SMITH [[link removed]] is a
staff writer at _The Atlantic_ and the author of _How the Word Is
Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America_
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AN ONGOING TRADITION: SINCE 1857, THE ATLANTIC HAS BEEN CHALLENGING
ASSUMPTIONS AND PURSUING TRUTH.

When the founders of _The Atlantic_ gathered in Boston in the spring
of 1857, they wanted to create a magazine that would be indispensable
for the kind of reader who was deeply engaged with the most
consequential issues of the day. The men and women who created this
magazine had an overarching, prophetic vision—they were fierce
opponents of slavery—but they were also moved to overcome what they
saw as the limits of partisanship, believing that the free exchange of
ideas across ideological lines was crucial to the great American
experiment. Their goal was to publish the most urgent essays, the most
vital literature; they wanted to pursue truth and disrupt consensus
without regard for party or clique.  

Here is the mission statement published in the very first issue
of _The Atlantic_, in November 1857, and signed by many of the greats
of American letters, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne:

FIRST: In Literature, to leave no province unrepresented, so that
while each number will contain articles of an abstract and permanent
value, it will also be found that the healthy appetite of the mind for
entertainment in its various forms of Narrative, Wit, and Humor, will
not go uncared for. The publishers wish to say, also, that while
native writers will receive the most solid encouragement, and will be
mainly relied on to fill the pages of The Atlantic, they will not
hesitate to draw from the foreign sources at their command, as
occasion may require, relying rather on the competency of an author to
treat a particular subject, than on any other claim whatever. In this
way they hope to make their Periodical welcome wherever the English
tongue is spoken or read.

SECOND: In the term Art they intend to include the whole domain of
aesthetics, and hope gradually to make this critical department a true
and fearless representative of Art, in all its various branches,
without any regard to prejudice, whether personal or national, or to
private considerations of what kind soever.

THIRD: In Politics, The Atlantic will be the organ of no party or
clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its
conductors believe to be the American idea. It will deal frankly with
persons and with parties, endeavoring always to keep in view that
moral element which transcends all persons and parties, and which
alone makes the basis of a true and lasting national prosperity. It
will not rank itself with any sect of anties, but with that body of
men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor,
whether public or private.

In studying this original mission statement, we came to understand
that its themes are timeless. The core principles of the founders are
core principles for us: reason should always guide opinion; ideas have
consequences, sometimes world-historical consequences; the knowledge
we have about the world is partial and provisional, and subject to
analysis, scrutiny, and revision.

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