Quotes from James W. Loewen

The historian must have no country. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

History is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we got to this point.

Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbooks stop lying to them.

Teachers need to teach the subject rather than to teach the textbook.

I don't think teachers read the textbooks. And I don't think adoption committees read the textbooks before they adopt them. I think they look at them.

What gets lost in the textbook is the overall narrative. It gets lost in all the boxes and all the photos and all the little stuff that's stuck in all the time.

Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. "Take a look in your history book, and you'll see why we should be proud" goes an anthem often sung by high school glee clubs. But we need not even look inside.

what a community erects on its historical landscape not only sums up its view of the past but also influences its possible futures.

Once you have learned how to ask questions—relevant and appropriate and substantial questions—you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. —NEIL POSTMAN AND CHARLES WEINGARTNER2

As Benjamin Franklin put it, "No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies."48

By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. . . . We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. —CHARLES V. WILLIE3

History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.

Socially, segregation labeled African Americans as less than human; the term "boy" itself, applied to the Scottsboro defendants even as they became elderly, implied that they were less than men.

Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. We need to know our history, and according to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we know we do.8

As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League. Although one arrow is easily broken, no one can break six (or thirteen) at once. John

For that matter an individual with the money (between $500 and $2,000) and a place to put it can erect a historical marker.

Not understanding their past renders many Americans incapable of thinking effectively about our present and future.

At this point the judge took over the questioning. Didn't lynchings happen in Mississippi? he asked. Yes, admitted the rating committee member, but it was all so long ago, why dwell on it now? It is a history book, isn't it? asked the judge.

Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free.

These exuberant proclamations of equalitarianism in sundown towns exemplify not only base hypocrisy but also what sociologists call herrenvolk democracy -- democracy for the master race. White Americans' verbal commitment to nondiscrimination forms one horn of what Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal famously called The American Dilemma. Blatant racism forms the other horn. In elite sundown suburbs, this dilemma underlies what we shall later term the paradox of exclusivity.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out. "Conclusions are not always pleasant.

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.

What You Can Do About Sundown Towns: The Three-Step Program in Action To help sundown towns transcend their pasts and end second-generation sundown town issues, I suggest a "Three-Step Program": •?Admit it: "We did this." •?Apologize: "It was wrong, and we apologize." •?Renounce: "And we don't do it anymore.

Since "healthy communities are able to recognize past mistakes," they went on to "pledge to work toward the common good in building a community where people of all races and cultural backgrounds are welcome to live and prosper.