From the outset, we had agreed that the museum would not display prominent pictures of the maimed or burnt victims of the atomic bombing, as we thought they were too gruesome, as well as unnecessary.

When the Smithsonian decided to exhibit the “Enola Gay,” the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the director and curators of the National Air & Space Museum (NASM) hardly anticipated the firestorm of controversy that would result. While the “Enola Gay fiasco,” as some at the museum came to call it, was not the first skirmish in America’s ongoing culture wars, it was an ominous warning of the battles to come. As a NASM curator involved in the early planning of the exhibit, who was also present at the debacle, the following is a first-person account of the origins, evolution, and fate of the “Enola Gay” exhibit, titled “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II.”[1]

In the expansion, what students are asked to know and do shifted. For example, the earlier version asked students to evaluate the contributions of African American individuals. The new standards now ask students to simply identify African American individuals. And there are now gaps in terms of standards focusing on ancient African civilizations outside of the context of slavery.