The Fight Over Black History, National Memory, and America’s Future

Friday June 26 at 6pm
People’s Plaza on Independence Mall, Philadelphia

RSVP and spread the word

 As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, a profound struggle is underway over what people are allowed to know, remember, and say about this country.

In March 2025, President Trump issued the executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity in American History,” escalating a broader fascist campaign to whitewash and suppress the truth about slavery,  conquest, genocide against Native peoples, Jim Crow, persecution of immigrants, and the long history of resistance to oppression in this country. The regime is reshaping national museums and national sites demanding a sanitized blind patriotism stripped of the truth of this country’s history and current reality, particularly as it relates to white supremacy and resistance to it.  

Alongside the suppression of Black history and historical truth, the regime has promoted the myth of widespread “anti-Christian bias” as part of a broader effort to redefine America as a fundamentally Christian nation rooted in patriarchal, white nationalist, “traditional” values. It is an attempt to impose an official mythology of unquestioned American greatness while criminalizing dissent, censoring educators and artists, reshaping museums and federal institutions, and conditioning millions to see critical thought itself as dangerous or un-American. 

A population taught comforting lies about the past is more easily mobilized to accept repression in the present—and atrocities in the future.

On the eve of July 4th, against the backdrop of Independence Hall and the Trump-censored President’s House memorial—where enslaved Africans were held in bondage as the foundations of the American republic were laid—Refuse Fascism convenes an urgent outdoor public panel discussion.

Come if you’re wondering: 

What does it mean to celebrate “America 250” as fascism is consolidating? 

Why is rewriting history so important to Trump/MAGA fascists?

Why are Black history and liberation struggles such central targets of fascist repression and suppression? 

And what responsibility do people of conscience have in this moment?

Featuring:

Michael Coard, Attorney and founder of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition. He helped win the creation of the President’s House slavery memorial and is now leading the fight to stop its dismantling by the Trump Regime and defend the public telling of slavery’s history at Independence Mall.

Masaru Edmund Nakawatase, Japanese American civil rights organizer, educator, and peace advocate born in the Poston incarceration camp in Arizona during World War II. Learn more

Dread Scott, visual artist whose work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennial, the Whitney Museum and has been outlawed by the US Congress.