The National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian Institution center in Washington, D.C., features exhibits that glorify violent radical groups like the Nation of Islam (NOI) and offer historical falsehoods on issues like slavery, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
The NOI features prominently in the museum, with exhibits offering effusive praise to the group with little mention of the organization’s history of violence, anti-White radicalism, and anti-Semitism.
“For over 40 years, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) led the Nation of Islam, which served as a spiritual sanctuary and self-help organization for millions of African Americans,” a tribute in one exhibit reads. “Its religious, educational, and economic institutions promoted Black unity, pride, and moral discipline and helped its members overcome poverty and other social ills.”
The museum displays the uniform of a member of the “Fruit of Islam,” the NOI’s paramilitary wing, in a section devoted to the Civil Rights Movement.
“This uniform was worn by a member of the Fruit of Islam (FOI), the Nation’s formidable self-defense security force,” a plaque explains. “The FOI was the embodiment of black pride, self-determination, and black nationalism.”
The museum describes the FOI as a “model of self-defense,” but the historical record suggests something different.
The FOI, acting on behalf of its parent organization, has committed a litany of violent acts since its inception. Its best known murder was the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X after the civil rights leader broke his ties with and began speaking out against the Nation, but its violence did not end there.
When Hamaas Abdul Khaalis sent letters denouncing Elijah Muhammad to dozens of NOI mosques in 1973, members of the group slaughtered his entire family at their home in the Shepherd Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Also in the early 1970s, an FOI splinter group called the “Death Angels” killed at least 15 white people in San Francisco in attacks explicitly motivated by race.
The NOI’s official theological position holds that an evil scientist named Yakub created white people, which the organization refers to as “blue-eyed devils.” Yakub, a black Meccan according to NOI doctrine, created the white race to rule over black people for 6,000 years through a method called “tricknology.” The NOI contends that the 6,000-year period ended in 1914, 16 years before Wallace Fard Muhammad founded the group.
The notion that white people are inherently evil has remained a constant in NOI rhetoric in the decades since.
“The white race is not a people who were made righteous and then turned to unrighteousness; they were made unrighteous by the god who made them,” Elijah Muhammad proclaimed in 1973.
Louis Farrakhan, the NOI’s current leader, told his followers in 2015 that “white people deserve to die.” He also exhorted a black audience to “rise up and kill those who kill us, stalk them and let them feel the pain that we are feeling” the same year.
Farrakhan is also known for his anti-Semitism. He has referred to Jews as “termites” and followers of the “synagogue of Satan,” has claimed that Jews are behind “pedophilia and sexual perversion institutionalized in Hollywood and the entertainment industry,” and has falsely blamed Jews for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Jim Crow.
The entrance to the museum’s “Slavery and Freedom” exhibit bears another falsehood about slavery, though not one that blames Jews.
“Five hundred years ago, a new form of slavery transformed Africa, Europe, and the Americas,” text on a wall at the museum reads. “For the first time, people saw other human beings as commodities—things to be bought, sold and exploited to make enormous profits. This system changed the world.”
The practice of enslaving humans and regarding them as property existed for thousands of years before the trans-Atlantic slave trade began, a reality other museums acknowledge. The Louvre Museum in Paris has an ancient Mesopotamian bill of sale for a slave from 2,600 B.C. and an inscription of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi—which includes numerous provisions related to the purchase of slaves—in its collections.
Greek geographer and historian Strabo discussed slave markets in his book Geographica, first published 2,000 years ago, in which traders describe slaves as “freight.”
Next to the false claim about slavery is a quote from historian John Hope Franklin reading, “We’ve got to tell the unvarnished truth.”
The museum’s bookstore contradicts that sentiment as well. The widely discredited 1619 Project by New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones features prominently among the literature on shelves, as do a bevy of titles on critical race theory and children’s books by failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
While the National Museum of African American History and Culture takes care to honor contemporary leaders like former president Barack Obama and MSNBC host Al Sharpton, it is considerably more measured when noting the accomplishments of black conservatives.
A prominent feature on Anita Hill, whose allegations of sexual harassment against U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas nearly derailed his Senate confirmation, dwarfs the exhibit on the justice.
A blurb about former secretary of housing and urban development Ben Carson notes his history as a brain surgeon but leaves unmentioned his role as a high-level government official.
“After his retirement from medicine in 2013, he embarked on a career in national politics,” the museum states.
The exhibits come amid an effort from President Donald Trump to rid the museum system of progressive politics. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year aimed at prohibiting “expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
He met with Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III over lunch on Thursday to discuss his administration’s effort to replace left-wing ideology with exhibits that “celebrate American exceptionalism.” The White House notified Bunch earlier this month that it would conduct a thorough review of the content of the museums under the Smithsonian umbrella.
The Smithsonian Institution did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment.
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