Ed. Dept. Hangs Banner of Charlie Kirk Alongside MLK Jr., Ben Franklin

The U.S. Department of Education has hung a banner of the assassinated right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk on its Washington headquarters alongside historical figures including Martin Luther King Jr. and Booker T. Washington.

The banner featuring Kirk is part of a display celebrating the United States’ 250th anniversary, multiple news outlets reported Monday.

In a Washington Post video, Kirk’s image can be seen along with banners of Benjamin Franklin, King, Washington, Anne Sullivan, and Catharine Beecher.

“Recharting the course toward a brighter future for American education,” says one banner hung along with the historical figures’. “Turning the page to the next 250 years of academic excellence,” says another.

Sullivan was the longtime teacher of Helen Keller, and her work became a blueprint for working with students who are blind, deaf-blind, and visually impaired, according to the American Federation for the Blind.

Beecher was an advocate for the education of women in the 1800s, founding the Hartford Female Seminary in Connecticut with her sister, an institution where women could study subjects that previously only men could study.

Washington, born into slavery, became a champion for vocational education for former slaves. He became the first president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and expanded it into a school on a 540-acre campus training Black students in skilled trades including carpentry, cabinetmaking, printing, shoemaking and tinsmithing.

President Donald Trump and GOP leaders have lionized Kirk since his shooting at a Utah university in September 2025.

Teachers across the country were fired or placed on leave ahead of investigations into social media comments critiquing Kirk and allegedly implying approval of Kirk’s death, often at the urging of Republican state leaders.

Republican state leaders have also teamed up with Turning Point USA, Kirk’s organization, to help it open new high school chapters.

And days after Kirk’s death, the Education Department launched a coalition of mostly right-wing groups including Turning Point USA, called the America 250 Civics Coalition, to produce educational programming for schools and universities for America’s 250th birthday.