Because I'm a hisory nerd...

As the quest to no longer be boring continues, I went out with Haley last night to the City Library to listen to the keynote address for the state historical society annual history conference. The keynote was the author James Loewen, made famous for his book, "Lies my Teacher Told Me." I first learned of this book the year I started teaching and not only was fascinated by the text, but was so moved and motivated by what I read I swore at that moment that I would not teach history from the crappy text book I was provided with. I resolved to do my best to teach real history, not the sanitized and biased history of book makers. This approach served me well in my 5.5 years in the classroom and as I left for greener pastures, I was very proud of the curriculum I created and in all the "true" history I shared with my students.

James Loewen has recently published a new book and this was the theme of his keynote address last night. His new text titled, "Sundown Towns", is about all of the towns from the past and the present in the United States that are still heavily racist and prevent African Americans from living in them by "any means necessary".

Because I'm a nerd, I took notes in my planner during the lecture. I guess that I thought I was still teaching, because I was feverishly writing and running out of room in the 45 minute talk. I wanted to share with you, my limited blog audience, some of the very interesting things that I learned last night.

Professor Loewen says that there were 3 events that caused the nadir of racism in America, which he claims was the period between 1890-1940. The first, the Massacre at Wounded Knee; the second, the Mississippi Constitution; the third, the failure of the US senate to pass the Fair Election Bill. These three events, according to Loewen, opened the door for the South to win the Civil War in 1890, even though it ended in 1864. At this time, the South "won Kentucky" (Kentucky started putting up monuments to confederate soldiers), got the Civil War renamed (unofficially) to "the War between the States", and the KKK saw a rebirth and resurgence of hatred and racism nation wide.

All of this stuff led to the approved distortion of American history where we decided to start being really bad and mean and excluding people and their stories from our history books and our lives. Not only did history become distorted, but in many parts of the country, people started to make it up. For example, Loewen cited an historical marker in the state of Idaho in the memory of over 300 pioneers who were killed by American Indians in the 1840's. Well guess what! The massacre didn't ever happen, just a bunch of freaky people who hated the American Indians made it up to cause a fuss.

The biggest side effect of of this time period is Sundown Towns. These are towns that existed and still exist in the US, that don't allow African Americans to live in the communities and warn them that they better get out of town by "sundown."

So, this is where things get interesting...we live in a nation that is supposed to be this "melting pot" where we all get along and we've got these stats looking us in the face.

• in 2007 there are still 500 sundown towns in Illinois, more than any other state
  
• estimated that there are a minimum of 10,000 sundown towns in the United States right now
• Mississippi has 5 such towns as compared to Oregon, which has 300
• 75% of 20th and 21st century American presidents were born and raised in sundown towns, including our current president. Highland Park, TX, where Dubbya was born and raised, just allowed it's first African Americans into town as homeowners 2 years ago.

Fascinating stuff, right? It definitely gives one something to think about, doesn't it? All this information falls along the lines of a lot of what we can read these days along the lines of Blink, Freakanomics, and the Culture Code. I'm not sure what it says about our nation as a whole, or what we can do about it but things are definitely not what they seem.

Loewen ended his lecture with a couple key thoughts. First, he said that that one of the reasons he does the research that he does is in hopes that, "telling the truth about the past helps bring justice in the present." Additionally, citing the reparations paid towards the descendants of those Japanese-Americans interned during WW II he said that "justice in the present sometimes allows us to fact the past [honestly]."

If you actually read this whole post, thank you for indulging me. I had a great time writing it.