Who tells America's story? Slavery's descendants want a bigger role.

When Egypt Lloyd learned she was a direct descendant of Tony, Cuba and Darby Vassall – people enslaved by Harvard University benefactors more than two centuries ago – it gave her a sense of purpose.

She founded the Slave Legacy History Coalition to help other descendants uncover their family history. Earlier this year, the coalition joined more than two dozen other groups to create the Descendants Forum, which shares research, advocates for historical preservation and coordinates communities shaped by enslavement.

As President Donald Trump has sought to recast how slavery is portrayed at museums and public sites, the forum'smembers say their mission to prevent the erasure of Black history and illuminate overlooked stories has taken on new importance.

For Lloyd and other descendants, debates over how slavery is portrayed are not simply arguments about how to tell the nation's history. They're about their family histories. Telling the history accurately preserves their connection to their ancestors and to the country.

"People can talk about their history without any limitations, but when it comes to slavery, they want to limit that," Lloyd said. "This coalition is not afraid of ... the White House or any other organization that wants to strip away the history of enslavement."

The White House in a July 4 report – timed to the country's 250th anniversary – accused the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History of embracing "extreme political activism," criticizing what it saw as an overemphasis on slavery in exhibits about the nation's founders.

The administration has pushed for a positive telling of the country's history celebrating "American exceptionalism." Trump has argued discussions of tragic periods of history, including treatment of slaves and Native Americans, undermine stories about the founding fathers achievements and cast the United States as racist and oppressive.

"There's been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional character, to beat the American spirit out of us, alienate us from our history and to make it impossible to even answer the question, what does it mean to be an American?" Trump said during a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore.

In January, the Trump administration directed the National Park Service to replace panels about George Washington's role as a slaveholder at the President's House in Philadelphia with new panels critics say downplay the history.

"We all need to sit down at that table and have an educational conversation about what really happened as a family," Lloyd said. "Because the table of America, the family table, is a rainbow of people."

Members see forum as a ‘big pot of gumbo'

The forum was created by the Clotilda Descendants Association, ancestors of those who came over on the last known U.S. slave ship, and Kinfolkology, which maintains a database of stories about enslaved people.

They timed the formation to the country's semiquincentennial, seeking to "complicate the celebratory narrative around the 250th," said Jennie Williams, founding executive director of Kinfolkology.

"There was a sense that the common narrative around the founding was missing something, to put it lightly," Williams said. "When they were taking down stuff at the President's House in Philadelphia, it energized us."

Williams and organizations who've joined the forum see it as a sort of "new founding moment." While hundreds of descendent-led organizations have existed around the country for decades, this is the first effort aimed at uniting them under a deliberative body, or "congress."

"We are aiming to help fill gaps for people who don't know their history. We want to preserve it and protect it," said Chanelle Blackwell, a member of the Clotilda Descendants Association. Her group is named after the last ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States.

A wealthy businessman chartered the Clotilda in 1860, more than 50 years after Congress banned the international slave trade. When the Civil War ended less than a decade later, the survivors of the Clotilda formed a community in Mobile, Alabama, called Africatown.

The ship was purposefully burned and sunk. But after a lengthy search, researchers found it in the Mobile River, near Africatown, in 2018. It is considered the most intact slave shipwreck ever discovered.

Blackwell said the ship's discovery gave her and other descendants of the 110 African men, women, and children transported on the ship a newfound identity.

"I haven't maybe had the same biological trauma of not knowing who my ancestors were, not knowing my story fully," she said.

Convening the Descendants Forum is a way to help other Black Americans uncover their own family histories, she said.

Frederick Murphy, the documentarian behind History Before Us, has traveled around the country telling untold stories of Black Americans. He said he's found common ancestral threads through many communities. But, before the forum was created, groups digging into genealogy had few ways of connecting with one another.

By bringing organizations together through the forum, he said, small community-led projects from Mississippi to New York have the chance to uncover larger stories about the Black experience in America over the last two and a half centuries.

"I hope it's a huge healing circle. I hope that it's a place for family gatherings. I hope it's a relative finder," he said. "My hope is this conglomerate is a big pot of gumbo."

Organizations aim to show ‘receipts'

Growing up in South Carolina in the 1970s, Joseph McGill Jr. said his school's history books told him his ancestors were "happy to be enslaved" and their owners were "benevolent people."

Years later, when he began conducting research as a park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument, he realized those narratives weren't accurate. In 2010, McGill founded the Slave Dwelling Project. He did it to help bring attention to the conditions of slave quarters and advocate for their preservation.

Many of these buildings, often built with cheap materials, existed across the United States in the 1800s but have since been destroyed or demolished.

A Civil War reenactor, McGill understood how stepping into real-life structures helped people better relate to history. In the early days, conveying that mission to historical sites across the South wasn't easy work.

"It was me calling these places, pleading my case, head bowed, head in hand, shuffling my feet, trying to explain to them my purpose," McGill said. "Now it's just the opposite. They call me."

He's spent more than 250 nights sleeping in former slave cabins across 25 states, including at some former homes of presidents – George Washington's Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, James Madison's Montpelier and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage.

"None of them are called plantations. At least not in their names. But they were," McGill said. "That's the problem. That's part of the history that we as Americans choose to want to buy into – the one that continues to put these people on a pedestal and not deal with the atrocities they committed."

People who visited historical sites are often interested in the big houses and mansions, McGill said. He believes the project has helped encourage more people to look at the slave dwellings and then restore and protect them.

"It's our most tangible connection to that era of our history," McGill said.

The Slave Dwelling Project joined the forum earlier this year. In all, the forum is made up of 30 organizations. McGill hopes they'll build enough momentum to ensure the history he's worked to illuminate continues to receive attention.

"It takes you from that place where I was left in 1979 to what the true stories of our enslaved ancestors were," he said. "We've got receipts now."

Karissa Waddick covers America's 250th anniversary for USA TODAY. She can be reached at kwaddick@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who tells America's story? Slavery's descendants want a bigger role.

Reporting by Karissa Waddick, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 4:01 AM.