Table of Contents for Lies Across America
Introductory Essays
In What Ways Were We Warped?
Some Functions of Public History
The Sociology Of Historic Sites
Historic Sites Are Always a Tale of Two Eras
Hieratic Scale in Historic Monuments
The Far West
1. Alaska Denali (Mt. McKinley): The Tallest Mountain — The Silliest Naming
2. Hawaii Honolulu: King Kamehameha I, The Roman!
3. California Sacramento: The Flat Earth Myth on the West Coast
4. California Sacramento: Exploiting vs. Exterminating the Natives
5. California San Francisco: China Beach Leaves Out The Bad Parts
6. California Downieville: Killing a Man is Not News
7. Oregon La Grande: Don’t “Discover” ‘Til You See The Eyes of the Whites!
8. Washington Cowlitz County: No Communists Here!
9. Washington Centralia: Using Nationalism To Redefine A Troublesome Statue
10. Nevada Hickison Summit: What We Know and What We Don’t Know about Rock Art
11. Nevada Nye County: Don’t Criticize Big Brother
The Mountains
12. Idaho Almo: Circle the Wagons, Boys — It’s Tourist Season
13. Utah North of St. George: Bad Things Happen in the Passive Voice
14. Arizona Navajo Reservation: Calling Native Americans Bad Names
15. Montana Helena: No Confederate Dead? No Problem! Invent Them!
16. Wyoming South Pass City: A Woman Shoulda Done It!
17. Colorado Pagosa Springs: Tall Tales in the West
18. Colorado Leadville: Licking The Corporate Hand That Feeds You
19. New Mexico Alcalde: The Footloose Statue
The Great Plains
20. Oklahoma Oklahoma City: The Oklahoma State History Museum Confederate Room Tells No History
21. Kansas Gardner: Which Came First, Wilderness Or Civilization?
22. Nebraska Red Cloud: No Lesbians on the Landscape
23. South Dakota Brookings: American Indians Only Roved for about a Hundred Years
24. North Dakota Devils Lake: The Devil is Winning, Six to One
The Midwest
25. Minnesota St. Paul: “Serving the Cause of Humanity”
26. Iowa Muscatine: Red Men Only — No Indians Allowed
27. Missouri Hannibal: Domesticating Mark Twain
28. Wisconsin Racine: Not the First Auto
29. Illinois Chicago: America’s Most Toppled Monument
30. Indiana Graysville: Coming Into Indiana Minus a Body Part
31. Indiana Indianapolis: The Invisible Empire Remains Invisible
32. Kentucky: Lexington: Putting the He in Hero
33. Kentucky Hodgenville: Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin — Built Thirty Years after His Death!
34. Michigan Dearborn: Honoring a Segregationist
35. Ohio Delaware: Who Menaced Whom?
The South
36. Texas Gainesville: “No Nation Rose So White and Fair; None Fell So Free of Crime”
37. Texas Alba: The Only Honest Sundown Town in the United States
38. Texas Pittsburg: It Never Got Off the Ground
39. Texas Fredericksburg: The Real War Will Never Get into the War Museums
40. Texas Galveston: This Building Used to Be a Hardware Store
41. Arkansas Little Rock: Men Make History; Women Make Wives
42. Louisiana Laplace: Suppressing a Slave Revolt for the Second Time
43. Louisiana Colfax: Mystifying the Colfax Riot and Lying about Reconstruction
44. Louisiana New Orleans: The White League Begins to Take a Beating
45. Louisiana Baton Rouge: The Toppled “Darky”
46. Louisiana Fort Jackson: Let Us Now Praise Famous Thieves
47. Mississippi Itta Bena: A Black College Celebrates White Racists
48. Alabama Calhoun County: If Russia Can Do It, Why Can’t We?
49. Alabama Tuscumbia: Confining Helen Keller under House Arrest
50. Alabama Scottsboro: Famous Everywhere but at Home
51. Tennessee Remember Fort Pillow!
52. Tennessee Woodbury: Forrest Rested Here
53. Georgia Stone Mountain: A Confederate-KKK Shrine Encounters Turbulence
54. Florida Near Cedar Key: The Missing Town of Rosewood
55. South Carolina Beech Island: The Beech Island Agricultural Club Was Hardly What the Marker Implies
56. South Carolina Fort Mill: To the Loyal Slaves
57. South Carolina Columbia: Who Burned Columbia?
58. North Carolina Bentonville Battlefield: The Last Major Confederate Offensive of the Civil War
59. Virginia Alexandria: The Invisible Slave Trade
60. Virginia Alexandria: The Clash of the Martyrs
61. Virginia Richmond: “One of the Great Female Spies of All Times”
62. Virginia Richmond: Slavery and Redemption
63. Virginia Richmond: The Liberation of Richmond
64. Virginia Richmond: Abraham Lincoln Walks through Richmond
65. Virginia Appomattox: Getting Even the Numbers Wrong
66. Virginia Stickleyville: A Sign of Good Breeding
The Atlantic States
67. West Virginia Union: Is California West of the Alleghenies?
68. District of Columbia Jefferson Memorial: Juxtaposing Quotations to Misrepresent a Founding Father
69. Maryland Hampton: “No History to Tell”
70. Delaware Reliance: The Reverse Underground Railroad
71. Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Telling Amusing Incidents for the Tourists
72. Pennsylvania Valley Forge: George Washington’s Desperate Prayer
73. Pennsylvania Lancaster: “You’re Here to See the House”
74. Pennsylvania Gettysburg: South Carolina Defines the Civil War in 1965
75. Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Remember the “Splendid Little War” — Forget the Tawdry Larger Wars
76. Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Celebrating Illegal Submarine Warfare
77. New Jersey Trenton: The Pilgrims and Religious Freedom
78. New York Manhattan: Making Native Americans Look Stupid
79. New York Alabama: Which George Washington?
80. New York North Elba: John Brown’s Plaque Puts Blacks at the Bottom!
81. New York Manhattan: The Union League Club: Traitors to Their Own Cause
82. New York Manhattan: Selective Memory at USS Intrepid
New England
83. Connecticut Darien: Omitting the Town’s Continuing Claim to Fame
84. Massachusetts Boston: The Problem of the Common
85. Massachusetts Amherst: Celebrating Genocide
86. Vermont Burlington: Shards of Minstrelsy on a Far-North Campus
87. New Hampshire Peterborough and Dublin: Local History Wars
88. New Hampshire Concord: “Effective Political Leader”
89. Rhode Island Block Island: “Settlement” Means Fewer People!
90. Rhode Island Warren and Barrington: Fighting over the “Good Indian”
91. Maine Bar Harbor: At Last — An Accurate Marker
Concluding Essays
Snowplow Revisionism
Getting into a Dialogue with the Landscape
Appendixes
Appendix A: Selecting the Sites
Appendix B: Ten Questions To Ask at a Historic Site
Appendix C: Twenty Candidates for “Toppling”