James W. Loewen, a well-known sociologist, has died. His 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a widely read critique of the distorted picture of race in America’s history textbooks. According to the New York Times:
The son of a doctor and a librarian, Dr. Loewen was raised in Illinois and educated in Minnesota and at Harvard, and he began his half-century as a university professor of sociology in 1968 at Tougaloo College, a historically Black liberal arts institution in Mississippi. Facing his first freshman class, he posed a seemingly simple question for 17 students: “What is Reconstruction?”
“Well,” he recalled them saying, “Reconstruction was the period right after the Civil War when Blacks took over the government of the Southern states. But they were too soon out of slavery, and so they screwed up and white folks had to take control again.”
Dr. Loewen’s heart sank, he told NPR in 2018. It was a glimpse of the enormous task before him: setting the historical record straight for Mississippi’s — and America’s — young students.
Patiently, he explained to his class: Black people never took over the Southern states. They all had white governors, and all but one had white legislative majorities. Reconstruction governments did not “screw up.” They created the best constitutions the South had ever had, and better governments than any others in the South in the 19th century. And whites did not put things right by taking control again. The people who took charge were white supremacists, and some were original Ku Klux Klansmen.
As to the problem of textbook distortions, Dr. Loewen found that state review and purchasing panels controlled the use of public schools’ books. The history text widely in use for years in Mississippi described Black people as complacent or troublemaking. It said Black officeholders during Reconstruction were corrupt, and it called the Ku Klux Klan a “secret social and fraternal club.” Lynching was not even mentioned.
Anya Kamenetz at NPR wrote an appreciation of Loewen in 2018 in which she said:
When I was a high school junior in New Orleans taking AP American history, my teacher assigned us a paperback book. Slim in contrast to our hulking required textbook, it was a funny, compelling, even shocking read. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen, explained how history textbooks got the story of America wrong, usually by soft-pedaling, oversimplifying and burying the thorny drama and uncertainties of the past under a blanket of dull, voice-of-God narration.
The book also taught a lot of history. It introduced me to concepts that still help me make sense of the world, like the “racial nadir” — the downturn in American race relations, starting after Reconstruction, that saw the rise of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Lies My Teacher Told Me overturned one assumption embedded in the history classes I’d been sitting through all my life: that the United States is constantly ascending from greatness to greatness.
Here is a list of books from Wiki by Loewen:
Loewen has published the following works:
- The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971; second edition, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press 1988
- Loewen, James W.; Sallis, Charles (1974). Mississippi: Conflict and Change. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Loewen, James W. (1982). Social Science in the Courtroom. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company.
- The Truth About Columbus 1989; second edition as Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, paperback, 2006
- Loewen, James W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press.
- Loewen, James W. (1999). Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong. New York: The New Press.
- Loewen, James W. (2005). Sundown Towns. New York: The New Press. ISBN 156584887X.
- Loewen, James W. (2007). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press.
- Loewen, James W. (2010). Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History. New York: Teachers College Press.
- Loewen, James W.; Sebesta, Edward H. (2010). The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause”. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-218-4
- Loewen, James W. (February 26, 2011). “Five myths about why the South seceded”. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- Loewen, James W.; Stefoff, Rebecca. (2019). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition. New York: The New Press.
- Loewen, James W. (2020). “Up a Creek, With a Paddle: Tales of Canoeing and Life”, Oakland, CA: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-827-0
I am genuinely sad. His books, as I told him, have been greatly helpful.
“usually by soft-pedaling, oversimplifying and burying the thorny drama and uncertainties of the past under a blanket of dull, voice-of-God narration.”
I think that’s largely unavoidable in a textbook format. A grade school textbook has to convey a lot of information about a long period of time. I doubt it’s practical to get into the nuances and complexities. That’s where a good teacher comes in.
History textbooks certainly do often have issues, when groups like the UDC have actively worked to have them present a biased version of history.
I tried to read Loewen once, many years ago, but didn’t finish the book. However, as someone who was reading non-textbook history books from a young age, the problem may have been I simply wasn’t the audience Loewen was writing for.