Lies Across America Quotes

“what a community erects on its historical landscape not only sums up its view of the past but also influences its possible futures.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Or guides might initiate a discussion of slave names. Many owners insisted on the right to name their newborn slaves—rather than allowing their parents this pleasure—and then deliberately gave them demeaning names or names that ironically invoked godlike figures from antiquity. George Washington, for instance, used Hercules, Paris-boy, Sambo, Sucky, Flukey, Doll, Suck Bass, Caesar, and Cupid. Most slaves received no last names. Guides could ask visitors to imagine the self-respect of black children under these conditions.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“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.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Monuments look static - carved in stone and all - but their meanings change as the present changes and as people enact new rituals at them.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Official state historical markers form a smaller population, and early in my research I determined to read all of them. Texas dissuaded me. The Lone Star state has more state historical markers—nearly twelve thousand—than the rest of the United States put together. To read and digest one marker per minute would require 200 hours—five full weeks in the Texas office. At the other end of the spectrum is Maine, whose assistant director of historic preservation flatly assured me, “Maine does not have historical markers along its highways.” Maine has markers and monuments, of course, not put up by a state agency, so the only way to read them is to drive every road in the state, keeping a sharp lookout.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Native Americans also insist that “squaw” is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to “cunt” in English. Others believe it meant “bitch” in Algonquian dialects spoken in Virginia.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“When you see a roadside marker, take in what it tells but also ask, how might this be wrong? One giveaway is the use of qualifying phrases introducing statements of fact, as in: “According to tradition...” or “According to the legislature...” Visitors can count on the rest of such sentences to be unsubstantiated.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“For that matter an individual with the money (between $500 and $2,000) and a place to put it can erect a historical marker.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848–1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew. Enroute to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. A second model crashed and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“The Civil War had been about something other than states’ rights after all. It began as a war to force or prevent the breakup of the United States.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“A generic National Park Service (NPS) brochure promises children, “Hidden within each national park is an exciting story waiting to be discovered. Learning the secrets of each national park is easy. Simply ask your teacher or Park Ranger...” This won’t work at Hampton, an estate built just after the Revolutionary War and located just north of the beltway that circles Baltimore. The staff at Hampton insists it has no story to tell and merely preserves the architecture. I have taken several tours at Hampton; each ranger begins by saying something like, “Every National Park Service site has a historical reason to be in the Park Service, except this one.” The NPS Web site groups its many sites under about 40 different topics. Many properties get multiple listings, but Hampton occurs only once, under “architecture.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“The first panel misquotes the preamble and conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, leaving out five words from within its selected excerpts. The architect requested the omissions so the text would fit better! Surely this memorable text should not be altered for so petty a reason. We know Jefferson would not approve, for whenever he sent correspondents a copy of the Declaration he took pains to show what the Continental Congress had added to his draft and what it had cut. The altered text reads,”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“It is not too much to say that the blacks in Georgia and the Carolinas made Sherman’s march possible. Their help meant that Sherman’s forces would not be traveling through hostile territory without supply lines. Rather, the soldiers were more like a huge guerilla force in friendly territory.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Other lakes get similar treatment. According to Michigan markers, whites discovered Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Superior. Lake Erie gets a more complex marker: “Named for the Erie Indians, this was the last of the Great Lakes discovered by white men...” Actually, none of them was discovered by white men, but this marker at least admits that Native Americans existed and implies they knew of Lake Erie.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“We can take back the landscape. It does not belong to the dead, but to the living. Monuments and markers are messages to the future, and the future does not belong to the rich alone but to all of us.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“For that matter, even if the owners and workers in a historic site had not included a president, most visitors would want to hear about the important events in their lives, not just about their furniture.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong