Mar 20, 2025
The first requirement of a slave society is secure borders.
—Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
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The first requirement of a slave society is secure borders.
—Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
Denying students the human-ness of Keller, Wilson, and others keeps students in intellectual immaturity. It perpetuates what might be called a Disney version of history. Disney's Hall of Presidents similarly presents our leaders as heroic statesmen, not imperfect human beings. Our children end up without realistic role models to inspire them.
—Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
James W. Loewen - Wikipedia
February 6th
Birthday of author and historian James W Loewen, who’s work specializes in racism and sociology
- Part of a lawsuit titled Loewen v Turnipseed in 1980
Loewen v. Turnipseed, 488 F. Supp. 1138 (N.D. Miss. 1980) case opinion from the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi
(The case)
vii, 384 p. : 24 cm
(Loewen’s Textbook, in question, available on the website to Borrow)
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xix, 444 pages : 24 cm
xvi, 248 pages : 23 cm
(Other recommended books by Loewen)
James Loewens’ op-ed in the Washington Post “5 Myths about Why the South Seceded,” published last Sunday, has become the most viewed article
(Free link to his 2011 Washington Post article “5 Myths About Why the South Seceded”)
James Loewen's "Lies Across America" Should Inspire Local Public History Projects
I’ve been listening to James Loewen‘s Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong using my public library’s subscription to Hoopla Digital. Listening to it, I wonder how Professor Loewen, who passed in 2021, ever slept at night knowing the scale of injustice society perpetuated and the mountain of indifference society placed in the path of restoration of rights and acknowledgement of…
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In this groundbreaking work, sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the classic bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks weren’t welcome—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South.
I haven’t seen this on any recommended reading lists, but if you want to know more about why some towns (or states, looking at you, Oregon) are overwhelmingly white, check out “Sundown Towns” by James Loewen. (He wrote “Lies My Teacher Told Me” about inaccuracies in textbooks, which is also highly recommended.) “Sundown Towns” is an extensive history of towns where BIPOC, but especially Black people, were excluded, violently expelled, or not allowed to be in a town/city/municipality after dark. And not just in the post-Reconstruction/Nadir era, and not just in the South. There are still sundown towns today, though they may not have the actual sign “Don’t let the sun set on you here”. And a lot of them are in the North. I went to college in a former sundown town. This book is difficult to get through, but it will change the way you look at cities and population distribution.
Source: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1089542294783578112
“The idea that we’re always getting better keeps us from seeing those times when we’re getting worse.” https://t.co/xLexno8Mo8
— Vox (@voxdotcom) January 27, 2019
The assistant attorney general for the state of Mississippi asked why he had voted against our book. And he had us turn to [a] page where there's a photo of a lynching. Now, our textbook at that time was the only textbook in America that included a photo of a lynching. And ironically almost none do to this day. Turnipseed is on the stand and he says: "Now, you know, some ninth graders, especially black male ninth graders, are pretty big, and I worried that teachers, especially white lady teachers, would have trouble controlling their classes with material like this in the book." The judge — who was an [older] white Mississippian, but a man of honor — took over the questioning, and he said, "But that happened, didn't it? Didn't Mississippi have more lynchings than any other state?" And Turnipseed said, and again I quote, "Well, yes, but that all happened so long ago. Why dwell on it now?" And the judge said, "Well, it is a history book."
James Loewen, from 'Lies My Teacher Told Me,' And How American History Can Be Used As A Weapon by Anya Kamenetz
It's a battle that's endured throughout so much of American history: what gets written into our textbooks. Today we tag in NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz, and hear from author James Loewen about the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
Length: 18:14 Date: 15 August 2018