On the first day of the semester, the Harvard-trained sociologist posed a basic history question to his students at the HBCU: define the period in U.S. history known as Reconstruction.
While the students’ answers ran the gamut, the overall response boiled down to something like this — Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War when Blacks, newly freed from slavery, assumed leadership positions in government, screwed up and Whites were subsequently called in to save the day.
“I was stunned,” confesses Loewen, recalling that day as he sits comfortably in the living room of his Washington, D.C., home, just a few blocks from Catholic University of America.
“How hurtful this could be [that] the one time African-Americans have taken center stage in American history, and [they] believe that [they] screwed up? What does that do to your psyche?”
