The ground beneath the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina is not ordinary ground. It is Gadsden's Wharf, the place where roughly 40 percent of all Africans who were trafficked across the Middle Passage and enslaved in the United States first set foot on American soil. Hundreds of thousands of people passed through this place in chains. For generations, that history was unmarked, unnamed, and unacknowledged.

It took two decades to build the museum that finally changed that. It opened in June 2023. In less than three years, more than half a million people have walked through its doors.

Now, the museum is furloughing its entire staff.

In a statement, the IAAM cited "a shift in the political and funding environment" that has made financial operations "uniquely more challenging." That language is careful and measured. What it describes is not. Federal support for cultural institutions documenting Black history, African American heritage, and the history of slavery has faced deliberate political pressure under the current administration. The IAAM is not struggling because it failed. It is struggling because the funding ground beneath it is being pulled away.

Half a million visitors in under three years is not a failing institution. It is proof that this museum serves an urgent public need and that Americans across the country are ready to reckon with this history. Furloughing the staff that makes that work possible is not a neutral financial adjustment. It is a loss that will be felt in the quality and continuity of what this institution can offer.

We are calling on Congress to restore federal funding to the International African American Museum and to protect cultural institutions that document the history of slavery, the Middle Passage, and the African American experience from politically motivated defunding. We are calling on South Carolina's governor and legislature to step in with state funding to ensure that an institution of this national and historic significance does not bear this burden alone. And we are calling on American corporations and philanthropic institutions to close the gap that political pressure has opened.

Gadsden's Wharf was silent for too long. The museum that finally gave it a voice should not have to fight for its survival three years after it opened.