The National Archives Is Playing a Dangerous Game with History

Colleen Shogan, the U.S. Archivist, is not just redesigning exhibits at the National Archives—she’s redesigning how Americans engage with their past. And not for the better. Recent reports reveal that Shogan and her team are systematically stripping references to hard truths from planned exhibits, from the displacement of Indigenous peoples to the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. In their place? Fluff. Picture Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley instead of Martin Luther King Jr. or Dolores Huerta. This is what happens when public institutions choose comfort over accountability.

“This is part of a broader theme of removing things that are seen as negative parts of history to focus on a more positive retelling of the American story.” — Andrew Restuccia, WSJ domestic correspondent

Let’s get one thing straight: public history is not about making people feel good. It’s not about nostalgia, and it’s certainly not about appeasing political power. Public history is about telling the truth, even—and especially—when it’s uncomfortable. Anything less is a betrayal of the trust that the public places in institutions like the National Archives. Sanitizing the past doesn’t change history; it distorts it.

Shogan’s leadership raises troubling questions about the role of politics in shaping public memory. Her decisions reflect a cowardly approach to history—one where the fear of angering Republican lawmakers or a potential future administration takes precedence over historical integrity. It’s not hard to see the pattern: the removal of treaties signed by Native American tribes, the erasure of Dorothea Lange’s images of Japanese incarceration camps, and the cutting of labor pioneer Dolores Huerta from an exhibit on historic figures. These aren’t just curatorial choices. They are acts of erasure, rewriting the narrative to avoid confronting the failures and injustices woven into the fabric of American history.

If the National Archives can’t stand firm and tell the truth, who will? This institution is supposed to be the memory of the nation—a place where the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and countless other documents live to remind us of where we’ve been and where we need to go. But right now, Shogan’s version of the Archives looks more like a theme park designed to keep visitors comfortable and power intact.

Let me be clear: public history isn't supposed to cater to fragile sensibilities. Visitors should leave a museum with more questions than they walked in with. They should be unsettled by the stories they hear, because history is messy, painful, and often unjust. That’s the work. Pretending otherwise does a disservice not only to those who lived through these experiences but also to those seeking to understand their place in the world today.

We’ve seen this story before—institutions bending over backwards to sanitize their narratives for political gain. But there’s too much at stake. Sanitized history feeds the toxic mythologies that have already led this country astray. We saw the consequences of that on January 6th, when historical myth-making about patriot heroes collided with political violence. And it’s happening again with this administration’s surrender to a sanitized narrative that comforts the powerful and erases everyone else.

Shogan’s changes aren’t just curatorial oversights—they’re political statements. They reinforce a version of America that’s as selective as it is shallow. They leave visitors with empty photo ops and feel-good moments rather than the real, complicated, and essential stories of struggle and resistance.

This is a fight for the soul of public history. If the National Archives becomes a place that tells only the parts of history that won’t offend, then it has failed in its mission. And if public historians don’t push back against this sanitized narrative, we are complicit in that failure.

Our responsibility isn’t to coddle the public—it’s to challenge them. To make them uncomfortable. To confront them with the truths that many would prefer to forget. That’s how history serves the public. That’s how public history keeps institutions accountable. And that’s the only way we can build a future that learns from the past, instead of repeating its mistakes.

The National Archives needs to decide what it wants to be—a tool of political convenience or a place where history speaks truthfully, no matter how hard it is to hear. If it chooses the former, it will have betrayed not just the public, but history itself.

This moment demands more from us—more courage, more accountability, and more truth. Anything less is just entertainment dressed up as history. And the stakes are too high for that.