AUSTIN, Texas — Officials at Texas State University canceled a traveling Black history exhibit from coming to campus because of Texas’ anti-DEI legislation and the exhibition’s topics, according to an email sent to the exhibition’s founder.
Texas civil rights organizations expressed “grave concerns” with this decision in a letter sent to the university’s president, Kelly Damphousse, on Tuesday. Representatives with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund (LDF) and the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) claimed the rescinded invitation of the exhibit “improperly suppresses speech based on viewpoint.” They called for the reinclusion of the exhibit on campus and an apology to its creator.
Dr. Khalid el-Hakim founded The Black History 101 Mobile Museum in 1995 as a social studies teacher who wanted to highlight parts of Black history he felt were underrepresented in the K-12 education curriculum. Since its founding, he’s accumulated more than 15,000 artifacts for the exhibit, which ranges in topics from slavery and Jim Crow to the influence of hip-hop in Black culture. The mobile museum has visited 43 states in its 30 years of operation.
This is the first time after 1,000 events that el-Hakim’s mobile museum has had an invitation revoked.
The exhibit’s cancellation on Texas State’s campus adds to a growing list of concerns regarding academic freedom at Texas universities this year. In September, a Texas State professor was fired after a video of him speaking about revolutionary socialism at a conference swirled online.
el-Hakim initially received an invitation from a Texas State official in October to bring the exhibit to Texas State for Black History Month in February 2026. After coordinating with that official for a few weeks, he received an email from them that the museum “was not approved” by supervisors to be on campus because of the “current climate” of Texas. That email is linked in the letter from the civil rights organizations.
In the letter opposing the university’s decision, representatives also said Texas State’s reasoning for uninviting el-Hakim’s exhibit misinterpreted the state’s anti-DEI legislation, Senate Bill 17. It specifically exempts “guest speakers or performers on short-term engagements” from its bans.
Texas State officials have posted a handful of events they will host on campus for Black History Month in February 2026. As of now, the mobile museum is not among them.