Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

634 Pages·1999·5.38 MB·English

by  James W. Loewen

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments

THE FAR WEST
1. The Tallest Mountain—The Silliest Naming - ALASKA
Denali (Mt. McKinley)
2. King Kamehameha 1, The Roman! - HAWAII Honolulu
3. The Flat Earth Myth on the West Coast - CALIFORNIA
Sacramento
4. Exploiting vs. Exterminating the Natives - CALIFORNIA
Sacramento
5. China Beach Leaves Out the Bad Parts - CALIFORNIA
San Francisco
6. Killing a Man is Not News - CALIFORNIA Downieville
7. Don’t “Discover” ‘Til You See The Eyes of The Whites! -
OREGON La Grande
8. No Communists Here! - WASHINGTON Cowlitz County
9. Using Nationalism to Redefine a Troublesome Statue -
WASHINGTON Centralia
10. What We Know And What We Don’t Know About Rock
Art - NEVADA Hickison Summit
11. Don’t Criticize Big Brother - NEVADA Nye County

MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS STATES
12. Circle The Wagons, Boys—It’s Tourist Season - IDAHO
Almo
13. Bad Things Happen In The Passive Voice - UTAH North
of St. George
14. Calling Native Americans Bad Names - ARIZONA
Navajo Reservation
15. No Confederate Dead? No Problem! Invent Them! -
MONTANA Helena
16. A Woman Shoulda Done It! - WYOMING South Pass
City
17. Tall Tales in the West - COLORADO Pagosa Springs
18. Licking the Corporate Hand That Feeds You -
COLORADO Leadville
19. The Footloose Statue - NEW MEXICO Alcalde

THE GREAT PLAINS
20. The Oklahoma State History Museum Confederate
Room Tells No History - ...
21. Which Came First, Wilderness or Civilization? -
KANSAS Gardner
22. No Lesbians on the Landscape - NEBRASKA Red Cloud
23. American Indians Only Roved for about a Hundred
Years - SOUTH DAKOTA Brookings
24. The Devil is Winning, Six to One - NORTH DAKOTA
Devils Lake

THE MIDWEST
25. “Serving The Cause Of Humanity” - MINNESOTA St.
Paul
26. Red Men Only—No Indians Allowed - IOWA Muscatine
27. Domesticating Mark Twain - MISSOURI Hannibal
28. Not the First Auto - WISCONSIN Racine
29. America’s Most Toppled Monument - ILLINOIS Chicago
30. Coming into Indiana Minus a Body Part - INDIANA
Graysville
31. The Invisible Empire Remains Invisible - INDIANA
Indianapolis
32. Putting the He in Hero - KENTUCKY: Lexington
33. Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin—Built Thirty Years
after His Death! - ...
34. Honoring a Segregationist - MICHIGAN Dearborn
35. Who Menaced Whom? - OHIO Delaware

THE SOUTH
36. “No Nation Rose So White and Fair; None Fell So Free
of Crime” - TEXAS Gainesville
37. The Only Honest Sundown Town in the United States -
TEXAS Alba
38. It Never Got Off the Ground - TEXAS Pittsburg
39. The Real War Will Never Get into the War Museums -
TEXAS Fredericksburg
40. This Building Used to be a Hardware Store - TEXAS
Galveston
41. Which Came First, the Statue or the Oppression? -
ARKANSAS Grant County
42. Men Make History; Women Make Wives - ARKANSAS
Little Rock
43. Suppressing a Slave Revolt for the Second Time -
LOUISIANA Laplace
44. Mystifying the Colfax Riot and Lying About
Reconstruction - LOUISIANA Colfax
45. The White League Begins to Take a Beating -
LOUISIANA New Orleans
46. The Toppled “Darky” - LOUISIANA Baton Rouge
47. Let Us Now Praise Famous Thieves - LOUISIANA Fort
Jackson
48. The End of Reconstruction - MISSISSIPPI Hazlehurst
49. A Black College Celebrates White Racists -
MISSISSIPPI Itta Bena
50. If Russia Can Do It, Why Can’t We? - ALABAMA
Calhoun County
51. Confining Helen Keller under House Arrest - ALABAMA
Tuscumbia
52. Famous Everywhere but at Home - ALABAMA
Scottsboro
53. Remember Fort Pillow! - TENNESSEE Fort Pillow
54. Forrest Rested Here - TENNESSEE Woodbury
55. A Confederate-KKK Shrine Encounters Turbulence -
GEORGIA Stone Mountain
56. The Missing Town of Rosewood - FLORIDA Near Cedar
Key
57. The Beech Island Agricultural Club Was Hardly What
the Marker Implies - ...
58. To the Loyal Slaves - SOUTH CAROLINA Fort Mill
59. Who Burned Columbia? - SOUTH CAROLINA Columbia
60. The Last Major Confederate Offensive of the Civil War -
NORTH CAROLINA ...
61. The Invisible Slave Trade - VIRGINIA Alexandria
62. The Clash of the Martyrs - VIRGINIA Alexandria
63. “One of the Great Female Spies of All Times” -
VIRGINIA Richmond
64. Slavery and Redemption - VIRGINIA Richmond
65. The Liberation of Richmond - VIRGINIA Richmond
66. Abraham Lincoln Walks through Richmond - VIRGINIA
Richmond
67. Getting Even the Numbers Wrong - VIRGINIA
Appomattox
68. A Sign of Good Breeding - VIRGINIA Stickleyville

THE ATLANTIC STATES
69. Is California West of the Alleghenies? - WEST VIRGINIA
Union
70. Juxtaposing Quotations to Misrepresent the Founding
Father - DISTRICT OF ...
71. A Product of Its Time and All Time - DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA Lincoln Memorial
72. “No History to Tell” - MARYLAND Hampton
73. The Reverse Underground Railroad - DELAWARE
Reliance
74. Telling Amusing Incidents For The Tourists -
PENNSYLVANIA Philadelphia
75. George Washington’s Desperate Prayer -
PENNSYLVANIA Valley Forge
76. “You’re Here to See the House” - PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster
77. South Carolina Defines the Civil War in 1965 -
PENNSYLVANIA Gettysburg
78. Remember the “Splendid Little War”—Forget the
Tawdry Larger Wars - ...
79. Celebrating Illegal Submarine Warfare -
PENNSYLVANIA Philadelphia
80. The Pilgrims and Religious Freedom - NEW JERSEY
Trenton
81. Making Native Americans Look Stupid - NEW YORK
Manhattan
82. Which George Washington? - NEW YORK Alabama
83. John Brown’s Plaque Puts Blacks At The Bottom! - NEW
YORK North Elba
84. The Union League Club: Traitors to Their Own Cause -
NEW YORK Manhattan
85. Selective Memory at the USS Intrepid - NEW YORK
Manhattan

NEW ENGLAND
86. Omitting the Town’s Continuing Claim to Fame -
CONNECTICUT Darien
87. The Problem Of The Common - MASSACHUSETTS
Boston
88. Celebrating Genocide - MASSACHUSETTS Amherst
89. What a Monument Ought to Be - MASSACHUSETTS
Boston
90. Shards of Minstrelsy on a Far-North Campus -
VERMONT Burlington
91. Local History Wars - NEW HAMPSHIRE Peterborough
and Dublin
92. “Effective Political Leader” - NEW HAMPSHIRE
Concord
93. “Settlement” Means Fewer People! - RHODE ISLAND
Block Island
94. Fighting Over the “Good Indian” - RHODE ISLAND
Warren and Barrington
95. At Last—An Accurate Marker - MAINE Bar Harbor

Snowplow Revisionism
Getting into a Dialogue with the Landscape