Loewen was born in Decatur, Illinois, on February 6, 1942. His father, David, was a medical director and physician from an immigrant Mennonite community; his mother, Winifred (Gore), was a
librarian
A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users.
The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...
and teacher. Loewen was raised in Decatur, where he attended MacArthur High School and was a
National Merit Scholar
The National Merit Scholarship Program is a United States academic scholarship competition for recognition and university scholarships administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), a privately funded, not-for-profit organizati ...
as a graduate in 1960.
Loewen attended Carleton College. In 1963, as a junior, he spent a semester in
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, an experience in a different culture that led him to question what he had been taught about
United States history
The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
. He was intrigued by learning about the unique place of nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Mississippi culture, commonly thought of as biracial. Loewen went on to earn a PhD in
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
Tougaloo College
Tougaloo College is a private historically black college in the Tougaloo area of Jackson, Mississippi. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It was originally established in 1869 by New Yor ...
, a
historically black college
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. M ...
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
. For 20 years, Loewen taught about racism at the
University of Vermont
The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a public land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is among the oldest universities in the United ...
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
He was selected for ''honoris causa'' membership in Omicron Delta Kappa in 1997 at
SUNY Plattsburgh
The State University of New York College at Plattsburgh (SUNY Plattsburgh) is a public college in Plattsburgh, New York. The college was founded in 1889 and officially opened in 1890. The college is part of the State University of New York (SUN ...
.
First Amendment battle
Loewen co-wrote a Mississippi history
textbook
A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...
Lillian Smith Book Award
Jointly presented by the Southern Regional Council and the University of Georgia Libraries, the ''Lillian Smith Book Awards honor those authors who, through their outstanding writing about the American South, carry on Lillian Smith's legacy of elu ...
for Best Southern Nonfiction in 1975. The book was rejected for use in Mississippi's public schools by the Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board on the grounds that it was too controversial and placed too much focus on racial matters.
Loewen challenged the Board's decision in a lawsuit, '' Loewen v. Turnipseed'' (1980). Judge Orma R. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi ruled that the rejection of the textbook was not based on "justifiable grounds", and that the authors were denied their right to
free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...
and press.
The
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
case and one of the foundations of the "right to read freely."
''Lies My Teacher Told Me''
Loewen spent two years at the
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
, where he studied and compared 12
American history
The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of Settlement of the Americas, the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Native American cultures in the United States, Numerous indigenous cultures formed ...
textbooks then widely used throughout the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
Eurocentric
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western worl ...
, and mythologized views of history. Loewen points out in the book that many of the distortions found in American history texts are "not even by the authors whose names grace the cover." In March 2012, the book's publisher,
The New Press
The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin
''Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition''
Loewen built on ''Lies My Teacher Told Me'' in ''Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks & Get Students Excited About Doing History'' (Teachers College Press, 2009). The first four chapters lay out an argument for how history should be taught at the elementary and secondary levels, while chapters 5–10 address teaching specific issues in history.
''Sundown Towns''
Continuing his interest in racism in the United States, Loewen wrote ''Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism'', which was released in 2005. The book documents the histories of
sundown town
Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminator ...
s, which are towns where
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s,
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, and other
minority groups
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
were forced (or strongly encouraged) to leave before sundown to avoid racist violence by the towns' white residents.
Loewen wrote about sundown towns repeatedly throughout his career, including in ''Lies Across America'', where he called the affluent suburb of
Darien, Connecticut
Darien ( ) is a coastal town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. With a population of 21,499 and a land area of just under 13 square miles, it is the smallest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast. It has the youngest population of any ...
, a modern-day ''de facto'' sundown town.
''Sundown Towns'' won the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. It also gained excellent reviews in ''Publishers Weekly'' and ''Booklist''. The book inspired a nationwide online initiative to monitor and list sunset towns across the USA. A review in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' argued that even though Loewen dedicated an entire chapter to research methodology, his statements regarding the number of communities which supported racial exclusion policies were widely variable and vague. "This vagueness, along with Loewen's almost evangelical passion for his material, raises questions of credibility – or at least of potential overstatement."
Later writings
In 2010, Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta co-wrote the book ''The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The Great Truth about the Lost Cause'', an anthology containing a wide array of primary source documents pertaining to the Confederacy from the time of the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
.
Loewen's last published book, ''Up a Creek, With a Paddle: Tales of Canoeing and Life'', is a memoir in which he returned to his life’s work and addressed the origins of racism and inequality, the theory of history, and the ties between the two.
Before his death, Loewen began researching for a new book, ''Surprises on the Landscape: Unexpected Places That Get History Right''. The book was planned as follow-up to ''
Lies Across America
''Lies Across America'', a 1999 book by James Loewen, is a sequel to his 1995 work '' Lies My Teacher Told Me''. The book focuses on historical markers and museums across the United States, arguing that every historic site is "a tale of two eras ...
'', which noted historically inaccurate or misleading historical markers and sites across the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. ''Surprises'' was planned to call attention to historical sites that are accurate and provide honest representations of events. His official website invited the public to comment on what towns and historical sites should be included in terms of presenting history right.
Personal life
Loewen married his first wife, Patricia Hanrahan, in 1968. Together, they had two children. They divorced in 1975. He married his second wife, Susan Robertson, in 2006. They remained married until his death.
Loewen died on August 19, 2021, at
Suburban Hospital
Suburban Hospital is a community-based, not-for-profit hospital serving Montgomery County, Maryland, and the surrounding area since 1943. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, Suburban is the designated trauma center for Montgomery County. Suburban Hos ...
in
Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in ...
. He was 79, and had been diagnosed with Stage IV
bladder cancer
Bladder cancer is any of several types of cancer arising from the tissues of the urinary bladder. Symptoms include blood in the urine, pain with urination, and low back pain. It is caused when epithelial cells that line the bladder become ma ...
two years prior to his death.
Bibliography
Loewen has published the following works:
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History News Network
History News Network (HNN) at George Washington University is a platform for historians writing about current events.
History
History News Network (HNN) is a non-profit corporation registered in Washington DC. HNN was founded by Richard Shenkman ...