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Author: Challenge your teacher

BY LINDA RUSH
THE SOUTHERN

Debunking some of the "bunk" that fills history textbooks and calling for the end of "sundown towns" in Illinois, best-selling author Jim Louwen gave his audience plenty to ponder Wednesday night.

He was speaking at the Gen. John A. Logan Museum in Murphysboro in the first of a bi-monthly program series focusing on Southern Illinois' role in the Civil War.

Mike Jones, director of the museum, said the crowd Louwen drew was "the largest ever at the museum," a fitting opener for the museum's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Instead of "covering" textbooks, Louwen challenged teachers to "uncover" and "discover" history. For two years, he worked at the Smithsonian Institution, studying history textbooks. He was appalled at what was written as fact when there was little or no basis in truth.

Instead of PowerPoint, he used an old-style overhead projector to show old signs banning blacks from some towns, images of badly beaten slaves that changed some people's minds about slavery, even photos of historic markers that were less than informative.

Loewen said he spoke at John A. Logan College a couple of years ago, and questioned people he met on what they knew about the college namesake. Most, he said, knew very little about Logan's life.

He focused part of his talk on Logan, the Murphysboro native son, who started out as a racist and even led in passing racist laws, but later spoke out about preserving the Union. He then enlisted in the Union Army, even though some of his family fought for the Confederacy.

Serving with the USCT (U.S. Colored Troops), who fought well and gained respect, probably helped trigger change in Logan's attitude. As Ulysses S. Grant was trying to take Vicksburg, some blacks met the army and helped the soldiers, feeding them, guiding them across the land, even enlisting.

As a stalwart Republican, Logan favored equal rights for all; Lincoln made use of Logan as a spokesman to counter the backlash to the Emancipation Proclamation, Loewen said.

But years, even decades, after Emancipation, racism lingered. In 1890, North Dakota passed a law forbidding blacks and whites to marry.

"Sundown Towns," the topic of one of Loewen's books, are those that forbid blacks (or Indians, or Chinese) to remain in town after dark. Researching the book, he visited many Southern Illinois towns that remain "sundown" communities to this day, even though they may no longer have written bans.

Showing a Southern Illinois map with 80 towns, Loewen characterized all but eight as sundown towns.