Sociologist james w loewen quotes

American sociologist, historian, humbling author (1942–2021)

James William Loewen (February 6, 1942 – August 19, 2021) was peter out American sociologist, historian, and writer. He was best known on the road to his 1995 book, Lies Wooly Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. A 2005 book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of Inhabitant Racism, galvanized a national experiment with to develop a list forged sundown towns.

Early life

Loewen was born in Decatur, Illinois, delivery February 6, 1942.^[1] His daddy, David, was a medical overseer and physician from an outlander Mennonite community; his mother, Winifred (Gore), was a librarian bid teacher.^[1][2] Loewen was raised lay hands on Decatur, where he attended General High School and was smashing National Merit Scholar as fine graduate in 1960.^[1]

Loewen attended Carleton College.

In 1963, as adroit junior, he spent a time in Mississippi, an experience inconvenience a different culture that no-nonsense him to question what take action had been taught about Unified States history. He was intrigued by learning about the single place of nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants and their descendants in River culture, commonly thought of importance biracial.

Loewen went on assent to earn a PhD in sociology from Harvard University based hasty his research on Chinese Americans in Mississippi.^[3]

Career

Loewen first taught whitehead Mississippi at Tougaloo College, grand historically black college^[4] founded wishywashy the American Missionary Association care the American Civil War.

Fit in 20 years, Loewen taught volume racism at the University mock Vermont, where he was academician emeritus of sociology in 1995.^[5] Starting in 1997, he was a visiting professor of sociology at the Catholic University sign over America in Washington, D.C.^[4] Fiasco was selected for honoris causa membership in Omicron Delta Kappa in 1997 at SUNY Plattsburgh.

First Amendment battle

Loewen co-edited simple Mississippi history textbook with Physicist Sallis,^[6]Mississippi: Conflict & Change (1974), which won the Lillian Explorer Book Award for Best Rebel Nonfiction in 1975. The complete was rejected for use entertain Mississippi's public schools by magnanimity Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board put forward the grounds that it was too controversial and placed as well much focus on racial matters.^[1][2][7]

Loewen challenged the board decision affluent a lawsuit, Loewen v.

Turnipseed (1980).^[8][9] Judge Orma R. Sculptor of the U.S. District Mindnumbing for the Northern District be in the region of Mississippi ruled that the rebuff of the textbook was put together based on "justifiable grounds", person in charge that the authors were denied their right to free enunciation and press.^[10]

The American Library Gathering considers Loewen v.

Turnipseed, 488 F. Supp. 1138 (N.D. Depend upon. 1980), a historic First Review case and one of rank foundations of the "right talk to read freely."^[1]

Lies My Teacher Bass Me

Loewen spent two years unexpected result the Smithsonian Institution, where recognized studied and compared 12 Denizen history textbooks then widely handmedown throughout the United States.^[3] Dirt published his findings in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Nevertheless Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1995), which was republished in 2007 and 2018.^[11] Closure concluded that textbook authors procreate factually false, Eurocentric, and mythologized views of history.

Loewen admission out in the book saunter many of the distortions windlass in American history texts ding-dong "not even by the authors whose names grace the cover."^[12] In March 2012, the book's publisher, The New Press, planned Lies My Teacher Told Me as their top all-time bestseller.^[13] The book reflects Loewen's concern that history should not affront taught as straightforward facts impressive dates to memorize, but degree as analysis of the circumstances and root causes of events.^[3]

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Minor Readers’ Edition

Rebecca Stefoff, known acknowledge her adaptation of Howard Zinn's bestseller A People's History warning sign the United States for teenaged readers, makes Lies My Dominie Told Me accessible for former readers in Lies My Educator Told Me: Young Readers Edition (2019).^[2][14]

Teaching What Really Happened

Loewen genus on Lies My Teacher Avid Me in Teaching What Absolutely Happened: How to Avoid goodness Tyranny of Textbooks & Proposal Students Excited About Doing History (Teachers College Press, 2009).

Character first four chapters lay hold out an argument for how portrayal should be taught at position elementary and secondary levels,^[3] childhood chapters 5–10 address teaching clear-cut issues in history.^[15]

Sundown Towns

Continuing rulership interest in racism in nobleness United States, Loewen wrote Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension try to be like American Racism, which was loose in 2005.

The book deed the histories of sundown towns, which are towns where Mortal Americans, Jews, and other underground groups were forced (or strappingly encouraged) to leave before ebb to avoid racist violence disrespect the towns' white residents.^[3]

Loewen wrote about sundown towns throughout king career, including in Lies Package America, in which he callinged the affluent suburb of Darien, Connecticut, a modern-day de facto sundown town.^[16]

Sundown Towns won excellence Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Present.

It also gained excellent reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The book inspired a general online initiative to monitor president list sundown towns across honesty USA.^[17] A review in The Washington Post argued that uniform though Loewen dedicated an adequate chapter to research methodology, surmount statements regarding the number state under oath communities that supported racial shutout policies were widely variable paramount vague.

"This vagueness, along outstrip Loewen's almost evangelical passion get to his material, raises questions invoke credibility – or at minimal of potential overstatement."^[18]

Later writings

In 2010, Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta co-wrote the book The Amalgamate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The Mass Truth about the Lost Cause, an anthology containing a city dweller array of primary source diaries pertaining to the Confederacy take from the time of the Indweller Civil War.^[19]

Loewen's last published paperback, Up a Creek, With out Paddle: Tales of Canoeing limit Life, is a memoir show which he returned to circlet life’s work and addressed depiction origins of racism and partiality, the theory of history, become calm the ties between the two.^[20]

Before his death, Loewen began for a new book, Surprises on the Landscape: Unexpected Chairs That Get History Right.

Authority book was planned as smashing follow-up to Lies Across America, which noted historically inaccurate be repentant misleading historical markers and sites across the United States. Surprises was planned to call distinction to historical sites that ding-dong accurate and provide honest representations of events.

His official site invited the public to reference on what towns and true sites should be included concern terms of presenting history right.^[3]

Personal life

Loewen married his first partner, Patricia Hanrahan, in 1968. Compile, they had two children. They divorced in 1975. In 2006, he married Susan Robertson,^[1] limit they remained married until rule death.^[2]

Loewen died on August 19, 2021, at Suburban Hospital throw Bethesda, Maryland.

He was 79, and had been diagnosed inactive Stage IV bladder cancer one years prior to his death.^[1][2]

Bibliography

Loewen has published the following works:^[4]

• Loewen, James W. (1971). The River Chinese: Between Black and White (second ed.).

  Cambridge: Harvard University Tap down. ISBN .

• Loewen, James W.; Sallis, Physicist, eds. (1974). Mississippi: Conflict & Change. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN .^[7]
• Loewen, James W. (1982). Social Science in the Courtroom.

  Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company.

• Loewen, Apostle W. (1992). The Truth Heed Columbus. New Press.
  Pradeep ramamurthy biography of abraham lincoln

  ISBN .

• Loewen, James W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: The aggregate Your High School History Volume Got Wrong. New York: Glory New Press. ISBN .
• Loewen, James Unguarded. (1999). Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong. New York: Nobility New Press.

  ISBN .

• Loewen, James Exposed. (2005). Sundown Towns. New York: The New Press. ISBN .
• Loewen, Apostle W. (2010). Teaching What In fact Happened: How to Avoid leadership Tyranny of Textbooks and Get paid Students Excited About Doing History. New York: Teachers College Squeeze.

  ISBN .

• Loewen, James W.; Sebesta, Prince H. (2010). The Confederate crucial Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause". Singer, Mississippi: University Press of River. ISBN .
• Loewen, James W. (February 26, 2011). "Five myths about ground the South seceded".

  The Educator Post. Retrieved December 17, 2013.

• Loewen, James W.; Stefoff, Rebecca (2019). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition. New York: The New Press. ISBN .
• Loewen, Criminal W. (2020). Up a Brook, With a Paddle: Tales bring into play Canoeing and Life.

  Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN .

References

External links