This week brought another round in President Trump's war against Black history. A federal judge rebuked his administration for removing panels that mentioned 'the dirty business of slavery' from the President's House in Philadelphia, where George Washington lived. (Among other inconvenient facts, the ruling reminded the public that the nation's first president rotated his slaves between his homes to duck state emancipation laws.) Judge Cynthia Rufe opened her ruling with a quote from George Orwell, and wrote that an agency 'cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims or the whims of the new leadership.' All in all, a robust defense of accuracy. But the administration is still fighting the facts of Black history on many fronts. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk to our staff writer Clint Smith, the author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, about what's unprecedented in this administration's approach to...
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