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Biography/History:
James William Loewen was born to Dr. David F. and Winifred Loewen in Decatur, Illinois, on February 6, 1942. He graduated from MacArthur High School in Decatur in 1960 as a National Merit scholar. He attended Carleton College, a liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, and graduated in 1964. While at Carleton, he spent a winter term of independent study at Mississippi State University, Oktibbeha County, in 1963. He got his Masters degree in Sociology from Harvard University in 1967, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard in 1968. His first teaching assignment was at Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Madison County, Mississippi. He taught there as assistant professor of sociology from August of 1968 to June of 1975. He was the chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology from 1969-1972, and chairman of the Social Science Division from 1972 to 1974.
Loewen’s first major work was a study of the Chinese population of the Mississippi Delta. This project, started in 1967, became his doctoral dissertation, The Mississippi Chinese. His second major project was a study of the all-Black town of Mound Bayou, Bolivar County, Mississippi. This study was completed with the assistance of Tougaloo students, and included a 1970 census recount of Mound Bayou done by Loewen and his team. His third project was the Mississippi History Project which produced the textbook, Mississippi: Conflict and Change.
Loewen received funding for the Mississippi History Project from the Southern Education Fund. He co-authored the textbook with Charles Sallis, history professor at Millsaps College, Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi, and produced it with the help of a team of faculty and students from both Tougaloo and Millsaps colleges. The textbook received the Lillian Smith Award for Best Southern Nonfiction but was not approved by the Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board for use in the classroom. The ensuing lawsuit to get the textbook in the classroom, James W. Loewen et al., v.
John Turnipseed, Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, et al., was finally decided in April of 1980, after a six-year legal struggle. The court found that Mississippi: Conflict and Change had been rejected on racially discriminatory grounds and that Loewen and his team had been deprived of their freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and equal protection. The Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board was required to put Mississippi: Conflict and Change on the state-approved textbook list for a period of six years. Loewen v. Turnipseed is considered by the American Library Association as an historic first amendment case.
After teaching at Tougaloo, Loewen went on to teach race relations at the University of Vermont for the next twenty years. He continued his work analyzing the way in which history is taught and remembered in the books, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, which received the 1996 American Book Award, and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong.
He also studied all-white towns in the work Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. He is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and, since 1997, has been a visiting professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America. He also serves as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. His awards include the First Annual Spivack Award of the American Sociological Association, the American Education Studies Association Critics' Choice Award, and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.
Scope and Content:
This collection consists of materials for three of Loewen’s research projects: the Mississippi History Project that late became the textbook Mississippi: Conflict and Change, the study of the Chinese in Mississippi, the Mound Bayou project, as well as materials documenting Loewen’s teaching career at Tougaloo College. The materials include correspondence, census surveys, statistical studies, research and teaching materials, and manuscript drafts. The bulk of the collection spans the years of 1967-1978.
Series and Sub-Series Identification:
This series contains material relating to the book project that resulted in the textbook, Mississippi: Conflict and Change. Loewen worked on this project with a team of faculty and students from Millsaps College and Tougaloo College.
Sub-series 1: Project Organization. 1858-1977; n.d. 51 folders.
This sub-series contains the material relating to the organization of the Mississippi History Project. Included are the original proposal for the project, reference material, and material on textbooks. The reference material is arranged alphabetically by author and then by title and subject if no author is indicated.
Box 1, folders 1-51
Sub-series 2: Correspondence. 1967-1979; n.d. 16 folders.This sub-series contains correspondence with the team of faculty and students who were working on the textbook with Loewen, correspondence with the Southern Education Fund which was funding the program, correspondence with potential publishers for the textbook, and some correspondence concerning the lawsuit to get the book into the classrooms. Team member correspondence includes material relating to Bill Ferris’ withdrawal from the project.
Box 1, folders 52-67
Sub-series 3: Chapter Drafts, Research Notes, and Teaching Aid Material. 1934-1978; n.d. 54 folders.This sub-series consists of the drafts written for each chapter in the textbook and research material used in the writing of those chapters. The chapter titles given are the titles on the material in the folder and reflect changes in the chapter titles as the work progressed. Also included are editing notes, page layout information, manuscript reviews, and information collected for the teachers’ resource packet.
Box 1, folders 68-78
Box 2, folders 1-43
This sub-series includes analysis of the textbook, the review of the textbook done for the Jackson Mississippi public schools, the prospectus describing the production of the textbook, and a book signing announcement.
Box 2, folders 44-47
This series contains material relating to Loewen’s study of the Chinese population of Mississippi, specifically of the Mississippi Delta region, done for his doctoral dissertation.
Sub-series 1: Research Material and Reference Articles. 1941-1972; n.d. 17 folders.
This sub-series contains the preliminary research done for the study of the Chinese population of Mississippi. The documents include correspondence, organizational notes, schedules, and reference material. Included in the reference material are articles on Chinese communities which are arranged alphabetically by author.
Box 3, folders 1-17
Sub-series 2: Interview Material. 1967; n.d. 13 folders.This sub-series consists of the informal census Loewen did of the Chinese population of Bolivar County, notes Loewen took during his interviews for the project, and the five page questionnaires he used in his survey of the Chinese of Mississippi.
Box 3, folders 18-30
Sub-series 3: Summary and Draft of Final Project. 1967; n.d. 3 folders.This sub-series consists of the thesis summary, dissertation prospectus, and draft of Loewen’s work, The Mississippi Chinese.
Box 3, folders 31-33
This series contains material relating to Loewen’s study of the all-Black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. This series also includes the census recount of Mound Bayou done by Loewen and his student assistants for the 1970 census.
Sub-series 1: Project Proposal. 1968. 1 folder.
This sub-series contains Loewen’s proposal for the research study of the all-Black town of Mound Bayou.
Box 3, folder 34
Sub-series 2 Census Recount Material. 1970; n.d. 6 folders.This sub-series contains correspondence, reference information, and completed questionnaires for the census recount project Loewen and his students did in conjunction with the research study of Mound Bayou.
Box 3, folders 35-40
Sub-series 3: Interview Material, Research, and Student Reports. 1968-1972; n.d. 15 folders.This sub-series contains material Loewen and his students gathered and reported on during the Mound Bayou study.
Box 3, folders 41-45
Box 4, folders 1-10
This sub-series contains material used as research for the Mound Bayou study and includes reports, public service information, newsclippings, and published articles. The reference material is arranged alphabetically by subject and title. The reference articles, which include articles on other all-Black towns, are arranged alphabetically by author.
Box 4, folders 11-54
This series contains material from other activities in which Loewen was involved during his time at Tougaloo College. Included in this series is information on Mississippi Public Television, the Mississippi State Hall of Fame, the Southern Education Fund, and a response Loewen wrote to an article on reconstruction in the Journal of Mississippi History.
Box 4, folders 55-59
This series contains published information and oversized items relating to all three of Loewen’s Mississippi projects.
Sub-series 1: Newsclippings and Published Material. 1929-1977; n.d. 38 folders.
This sub-series contains newsclippings and published material Loewen collected while at Tougaloo, including material that may have been used for reference for his three Mississippi projects. The published material is arranged alphabetically by title. The newsclippings are arranged chronologically and identified by principle subjects.
Box 5, folders 1-38
Sub-series 2: Oversized Items. 1965-1981; n.d. 6 folders.This sub-series contains oversized material from all three projects. Included are the pre-publication draft of Mississippi: Conflict and Change, collected interview material, a statistics printout for the study of the Chinese in Mississippi, and maps of Mound Bayou and Bolivar County.
Box 6, folders 1-5
Box 7