![]() ![]() The book Loewen wrote in response to that experience, 1974's Mississippi: Conflict and Change, won the Lillian Smith Book Award for Best Southern Nonfiction in 1976 and garnered positive reviews from outlets including the New York Times, Newsweek, the Harvard Education Review, The Nation and the American Historical Association's newsletter. ![]() ![]() Loewen said there were "at least three direct lies in that sentence": Black Americans in the South had, in fact, tried to run for office and write progressive state constitutions following the Civil War, but they were violently shut out of power by white supremacists in both organized groups like the KKK as well as the Democratic party. "Sixteen out of my 17 students said, 'Well, Reconstruction was the period right after the Civil War when Blacks took over the government of the Southern states, but they were too soon out of slavery, and so they screwed up and white folks had to take control again.' " "And what happened to me was an 'aha' experience, although you might better consider it an 'oh no' experience," Loewen told NPR. ![]() Loewen told NPR's Gene Demby in an interview in 2018 that he decided to write his first high school text about race and history when he asked a class of students at Tougaloo College, a historically Black university near Jackson, Miss., what they knew about Reconstruction. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |