An alarming exhibit in the Old State House in Boston has revealed the severity of indoctrination in historical landmarks and museums across the country. The urgency for conservative and moderate professionals to enter the field of education extends beyond K-12 classrooms and universities to America’s museums where important history is being preserved for future generations. In addition to our call for conservatives and moderates to become teachers, The Locke Society is now calling for moderates and conservatives to become guides, contributors, employees or volunteers at these museums across the country, or the organizations that support them.
While much of what the radical left does now in education is expected, the exhibit we found at the Old State House in Boston, which according to the Boston Globe opened in July of 2023, was shocking.
Upon arriving at the historic building, visitors are greeted with a sign that says “Step into the heart of revolutionary Boston” where they take you on a journey back to the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
Entering the exhibit, visitors are asked to vote “yes” or no” to the question: “When, if ever, do you believe it is justified to violently destroy property in the name of a cause?”
Visitors are asked to vote again on similar questions throughout the exhibit as they travel through the displays from the Boston Tea Party to January 6, 2021.
This sets up visitors for a deep reflection process as they walk through the exhibit. This type of education is a staple method of teaching for progressive educators who want their students to make a claim and revisit it after learning new information to determine whether or not their mind was changed and why.
After walking through displays on the Boston Tea Party, the museum then presents “other acts of destruction of property,” including a Weather Underground bombing. Noticeably, the developers of the exhibit did not highlight the historic destruction from the Black Lives Matter riots, which led to around two billion dollars in insurance claims, in 140 cities across America. Instead, the exhibit concludes with a detailed and graphic presentation of the riot at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
The display reads: “On January 6, 2021, thousands of pro-Trump protestors stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. During their occupation of the Capitol, protestors caused considerable damage to the building, breaking or damaging furniture, windows, doors, artwork, and Congressional offices. They also littered the building with plastic bottles, body armor, cigarette butts, stickers, signs and flags. In April 2022, multiple federal agencies estimated the total damage to be over $2.7 million. Additionally, nine people died in connection to the event: four protestors and five Capitol Police officers.”
Comparing the patriots who participated in what became known as the Boston Tea Party to those who partook in a Weather Underground bombing or the riot at the U.S. Capitol Building is severely misleading. Their effort to relate the events is a serious distortion of history and detracts from the cause patriots fought for in Boston at the time of our nation’s birth.
A display in the exhibit reads, “The Boston Tea Party remains a widely celebrated story of the American Revolution, but it is one of many incidents of property destruction associated with social and political causes in our shared history. Consider other mass actions that led to property destruction: How are these incidents different from the Tea Party? How are they the same? Do they make you feel differently about the Tea Party? Does the Tea Party make you feel differently about them?”
While the long-time trend in education to connect historical events to the present day is sometimes doable, the Boston Tea Party and the history of the American Revolution in Boston is unique for several reasons and should be taught as such. The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest to which no current event can compare in purpose, risk, or result.
However, not all agree. According to Nathaniel Sheidley, President and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, the nonprofit organization responsible for educating visitors at the Old State House and the Old South Meeting House, the revolution never ends. Sheidley, who taught early American history at Wellesley College for ten years, said the sites he has developed resources for provide great opportunities for a “teachable moment,” a term educators view as pure gold.
Referring to the two historic sites the nonprofit works with, Sheidley said in a video posted to the website, “They were revolutionary spaces during the 18th Century. If we do our work right, they can be revolutionary spaces today.”
“When we say ‘We the people,’ exactly what do we mean? Who’s in that circle of ‘we’ and who’s excluded?” he asks. “That’s the question we’re grappling with all around Boston today, all around the country today.”
“We have an opportunity in these buildings to…do the hard work of debating as a democracy,” Sheidley continues, suggesting that these historical sites are not places where the history of what happened there is remembered and preserved, but places where Americans should argue over their significance.
According to the creator of the exhibit, Matthew Wilding, who is the Director of Interpretation and Education, the exhibit is not meant to make any type of “broad statement,” rather the events are just being discussed in the same room…
“We’re not trying to make any broad statements about any of the other historic events that we’re depicting in this exhibit, we’re just juxtaposing them next to the Boston Tea Party and asking visitors, well how do you feel about the Boston Tea Party if you know that the Boston Tea Party was not well-received at the time that it happened? And, how do you feel about these other events in relationship to the Boston Tea Party, which has very similar criteria of a protest in which people who perceived themselves to be slighted by some power go and destroy property because they feel as if they don’t have any other recourse.”
Calling it a “teachable moment,” however shows that the curators of the exhibit felt that there was something to learn with January 6, 2021 in congruence with the Boston Tea Party. If this were not the case, why add it in? Why encourage visitors to ponder that particular day while immersed in displays of violence all completely unrelated to the history of the Boston Tea Party?
Upon doing further research, we learned that this is not a new phenomenon. In 2021, the Smithsonian labeled the Boston Tea Party as an “unprecedented act of domestic terrorism,” and in 2023, The Washington Post labeled the same event as an act of “terrorism” committed by “blackfaced” white men.
Transforming such historical sites into nothing more than locations for evolving academic trends does nothing more than corrupt its history and leave it vulnerable to ideas grounded in falsities and a far left agenda, which is doing incredible harm to America through their mission to rewrite our history. It is bad enough that teachers in classrooms across the country misrepresent and disrespect our Founding Fathers and the brave patriots who fought for the birth of America, but doing so in the exact places where they lived, worked, and fought is another level of disrespect and corruption.
While in Boston, we also visited Faneuil Hall where we found the expected far left propaganda echoing the 1619 Project. One particular sign in an exhibit in Faneuil Hall read, “It is impossible to understand the colonization of New England without including slavery.”
The poster continues, “The Puritans who settled Boston were part of this wider world of colonization and enslavement. They understood slavery and its usefulness from the moment they arrived in New England. Shortly after arriving, Puritan colonists chose to purchase and enslave other human beings.”
While it is understandable to feature an exhibit on slavery, the one in Faneuil Hall takes it a step too far in filling the most visited area with pillars highlighting “Black Radical Protest in Boston in the 20th and 21st Centuries” and the “Legacies of Enslavement” that continue today including “the racial wealth gap” and “redlining.”
If historians want to prominently display the history of slavery in Faneuil Hall, they should also display just as loudly the efforts of emancipation and those who were against slavery. For example, in a letter we feature in our lesson plan, Early Emancipation Efforts, from John Adams to George Churchman written in 1801, the Founding Father from Massachusetts wrote, “Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known, and my practice has been so conformable to my Sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The Abolition of Slavery must be gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection.”
They could also include the fact that the body of Crispus Attucks, who was killed during the Boston Massacre, lay in state at Faneuil Hall before he was laid to rest in a cemetery where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere were also laid to rest.
If either of these were mentioned in some display, it was not prominent.
These suggestions could easily be made by a conservative or moderate to add to the exhibit if they were to be on the team of putting it together. Doing so would not put them in any position for reprimand from others, but one that could be welcomed as a way to include “multiple perspectives,” ensuring that no part of history, good or bad, is left out.
While a conservative or moderate likely could not have stopped the exhibits from being brought into the historic sites, they could make a difference in the presentation, even if just one speck of knowledge shows something good. What you can do with one addition or one change will turn into several and maybe even an entire exhibit itself one day, if we have enough moderates and conservatives enter the field and manage their positions successfully.
If you’re wondering the extent to which K-12 teachers can have influence beyond their classrooms, you’ll see it in Boston. In fact, you’ll see it at any museum where the political agenda of the far left has seeped in through displays, tours, guides, and the overall education at many historical sites.
While the latest research provides deeper insight into history, it is vulnerable to the agenda of the historian who is interpreting the research. Today, it is apparent that many of the historians working in these museums, and as teachers, are viewing history, including people, places, events, and documents, through an anti-American lens that seeks to find victims of America as opposed to honoring the heroes of America.
