Leon F. Litwack
Leon Litwack is the A.F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and a past president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the Southern Historical Association. His publications include North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (1961); Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1980), winner of the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman prizes; Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998); and How Free is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow (2009). He is writing a sequel to Trouble in Mind that will focus on black southerners from World War II to the civil rights movement.
Articles by this Contributor
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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
