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| James Loewen | |
James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, died on August 19 following a long illness. He was 79 years old.
The New York Times described Loewen as "a relentless contrarian who challenged anyone who imagined academic life as a passage through genteel lectures on settled matters for drowsy students on leafy campuses. He charged through history like a warrior, dismantling fictions and exposing towns for excluding minorities; teachers and historians for dumbing lessons down; and defendants in 50 class-action lawsuits who, according to his expert testimony, victimized people in civil rights, voting rights and job discrimination cases."
Among his well-known quotations are "Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the 11th grade" and "People have a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. Evidence must be located, not created, and opinions not backed by evidence cannot be given much weight."
Besides Lies My Teacher Told Me, a backlist star that has sold more than two million copies, Loewen also wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Lies Across America, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition, all published by the New Press.
At the time of his death, Loewen was working with graphic artist Nate Powell on a graphic edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me, which will be published posthumously. He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened; The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White; and the memoir Up a Creek, with a Paddle. He also edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" About the "Lost Cause."
Among many honors, Loewen won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.
Loewen was also at the center of an important First Amendment case that involved Mississippi: Conflict and Change, a Mississippi history textbook co-written and co-edited with Charles Sallis that won the Lillian Smith Book Award for Best Southern Nonfiction in 1976. After the book was rejected for use in state public schools by the Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board, which said it was controversial and racially inflammatory, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued in federal court on behalf of Loewen and his co-authors.
As the Times recounted: "In 1980, a United States District Court, citing First and Fourteenth Amendment freedoms, ruled in favor of Dr. Loewen and his colleagues. The American Library Association called it a victory for the 'right to read freely.' "
Anticipating his death, Loewen recently launched a website to continue to track "sundown towns" after his death and sent the following wish to his supporters: "I hope ALL of you will use my new website at justice.tougaloo.edu to cause social and intellectual change. With your help, we can all use the energy freed by BLM and George Floyd's death to create a new America in which accurate history prompts positive social change in the present, and such efforts lead to a nation willing to face its past with both eyes open wide."
A memorial service will be held at a later date. The family requests that memorial contributions be made to Tougaloo College in Mississippi (please indicate the contribution is to support Loewen's antiracist website at justice.tougaloo.edu).