WATCH: ‘If you erase it, we will replace it.’ Rep. Mfume on Black history at Smithsonian museums

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., said Black Americans are “outraged at what is happening now with these efforts to do away with the African American museum and all of the Smithsonian,” during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

“If you erase it, we will replace it,” Mfume said. “It’s that damn simple.”

In his impassioned comments, Mfume quoted former President Abraham Lincoln and said “history taught us and still teaches us that we can't keep making the same mistakes.”

Mfume said he sat at the hearing “as a Black man who grew up in segregation, who wasn't allowed to go certain places, who drank from a water fountain that said colored, who found his mother and his father unable to do anything other than basic day work.”

“We will not let you destroy that museum. No matter how long it takes, how many battles are required, how much effort is needed, we will not allow that to happen,” Mfume said. “Unless you find a way to kill all of us and walk over our bodies to change history.”

The hearing focused on the way the Smithsonian Institution presents scholarship on U.S. history. In announcing the hearing, the Republican-led committee claimed that the “Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is promoting a narrow, politically tendentious agenda instead of seeking to instill in visitors an appreciation for America’s unique history as a beacon of liberty, democracy, and opportunity.”

In President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has sought to clamp down on how American history is framed in public spaces, removing exhibits from national parks on slavery and violence against Native Americans.

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