In 1974, Dr. James W. Loewen authored the history book, Mississippi: Conflict and Change, but had to sue to overturn rejection of implementation of the book in the state’s high school system by the purchasing board.
On the first day of the semester, the Harvard-trained sociologist posed a basic history question to his students at the HBCU: define the period in U.S. history known as Reconstruction.
While the students’ answers ran the gamut, the overall response boiled down to something like this — Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War when Blacks, newly freed from slavery, assumed leadership positions in government, screwed up and Whites were subsequently called in to save the day.
“I was stunned,” confesses Loewen, recalling that day as he sits comfortably in the living room of his Washington, D.C., home, just a few blocks from Catholic University of America.
“How hurtful this could be [that] the one time African-Americans have taken center stage in American history, and [they] believe that [they] screwed up? What does that do to your psyche?”
Loewen quickly came to understand that his students were typical products of a deeply flawed education system that paid little attention to the accomplishments of African-Americans. As desegregation slowly began to take hold across the Magnolia state amid fierce resistance, Loewen was even more convinced that high schools across the state had done a lackluster job in educating its students about not only the state’s history, but African-American history in particular.
To validate his conclusions, he canvassed high schools and witnessed firsthand how high school teachers followed the required history textbooks unquestionably.
