"In the East a new star is risen! With pain and anguish the old order has given birth to the new, and behold in the East a man-child is born! Onward, comrades, all together! Onward to the campfires of Russia! Onward to the coming dawn!" (11).
This quote from Keller's writing shows her private views about communism and her appreciation for Russia, which American history books often do not mention at all, preferring to draw her as a dyed-in-the-wool American patriot.
"At a private White House showing, Wilson saw the movie, now retitled "Birth of a Nation," and returned Griffith's compliment: 'It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true.'" (18).
This quote shows President Wilson praising one of the most notoriously racist movies ever made, "Birth of a Nation," filmed in 1915. It reveals the president's beliefs, which are glossed over in many history books.
"Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves—about five thousand—than any other individual" (55).
Here Loewen shows that Columbus is not the hero and explorer that history books have led us to believe. In fact, he participated in some of the most evil actions in European history, including helping to begin the African slave trade.
"Now that is a story worth telling! Compare the pallid account in Land of Promise: 'He had learned their language from English fisherman'" (84).
Here we see how the stories of Native Americans have been obscured by history textbooks. Loewen compares the history given by a textbook versus the actual biography of Squanto, one of the key translators who facilitated relations between the Native Americans and the white settlers.
"A related possibility for Natives, Europeans, and Africans was intermarriage. Alliance through marriage is a common way for two societies to deal with each other, and Indians in the United States repeatedly suggested such a policy. Spanish men married Native women in California and New Mexico and converted them to Spanish ways. French fur traders married Native women in Canada and Illinois and converted to Native ways. Not the British" (120).
This quote shows the different approaches by each country to the Native Americans. The French and Spanish allowed some intermarriage and assimilation, but the British were quick to rule it out. They kept their cultures separate at all costs, ensuring that the situation would likely be resolved only through war.
"When was the country we now know as the United States first settled?... the best answer might be 1526. In the summer of that year, five hundred Spaniards and one hundred black slaves founded a town near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. Disease and disputes with nearby Indians caused many deaths in the early months of the settlement. In November the slaves rebelled, killed some of their masters, and escaped to the Indians. By then only 150 Spaniards survived; they retreated to Haiti. The ex-slaves remained behind and probably merged with nearby Indian nations... Americans history textbooks cannot be faulted for not mentioning that the first non-Native settlers in the United States were black" (131).
This quote shows that African-Americans were integral to the United States from the very beginning, no matter how much people would like to rewrite history from the exclusive perspective of the white settler. It introduces the possibility that the first permanent non-Native settlers were African, not British, Spanish, or French.
"Americans seem perpetually startled at slavery, Children are shocked to learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Interpreters at Colonial Williamsburg say that many visitors are surprised to learn that slavery existed there—in the heart of plantation Virginia! Very few adults today realize that our society had been slave much longer than it has been free" (135).
This quote illustrates how the perception and reality of history differ, for Americans and for visitors, even in the location where slavery took place.
"Textbook authors protect us from a racist Lincoln. By so doing, they diminish students' capacity to recognize racism as a force in American life. For if Lincoln could be racist, then so might the rest of us be. And if Lincoln could transcend racism, as he did on occasion, then so might the rest of us" (147).
Here the author illustrates why not censoring the words of our forefathers can be beneficial to our understanding of modern America and battling racism in the present day, by helping us to see that racism has always been a part of the fabric of the U.S.
"During the nadir, segregation increased everywhere. Jackie Robinson was not the first black player in major league baseball. Blacks had played in the major leagues in the nineteenth century, but in 1889 whites had forced them out" (155).
This quote illustrates how the country has often moved backwards in many ways. After the Civil War, freedoms for African-Americans grew, but there was a backlash in the 1890-1920 period that moved blacks backwards into segregation and disenfranchisement. The more success African-Americans gained, the more jealous people became and the more they were targeted.
"Teachers have held up Helen Keller, the blind and deaf girl who overcame her physical handicaps, as an inspiration to generations of schoolchildren. Every fifth-grader knows the scene in which Anne Sullivan spells water into young Helen's hand at the pump. At least a dozen movies and filmstrips have been made on Keller's life. Each yields its version of the same cliche" (10).
This quote illustrates the essential problem of high school history textbooks. By turning its protagonists into glorified, one-dimensional heroes instead of showing them as human, flawed, people, it paradoxically infantilizes them. These stories then yield only cliches, alienating its audience. This accounts for why so many high school students hate or ignore their history classes.
