James Loewen, a renowned sociologist, public educator and racial justice activist, died on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was the author of several books, including the best-seller Lies My Teacher Told Me. He was 79.
His death was confirmed by Stephen Berrey, a peer and professor of American culture and history at the University of Michigan. He says Loewen had been diagnosed with bladder cancer about two years ago.
Loewen was born Feb. 6, 1942, in Decatur, Ill., and based his career on dispelling commonly held myths about racial progress in American history. His goal was to give the public historical tools that he hoped would help people achieve concrete change towards racial justice in the present.
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.