SURPRISES ON THE LANDSCAPE:
UNEXPECTED PLACES THAT GET HISTORY RIGHT

Surprises on the Landscape will tell little-known stories from our past that resonate importantly with our national narrative. The book will also celebrate people who have "gotten it right" -- revised our landscape to recognize difficult incidents in all their complexity. Examples include:
-- The Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota, now recognized as not just "the Indians' fault" in Mankato and some other locations.
-- The Pioneer Monument in San Francisco, part of which celebrates visually the destruction of American Indians, has a new plaque telling that they survived and still live in California.
-- The international slave trade, outlawed by Congress in 1808, continued, and two sites in America recognize this fact.
-- Americans have forgotten the important story of the Christiana (PA) Riot of 1851, but Christiana hasn't; an obelisk tells what happened there in 1851. In 1998, Wilmington, NC, finally faced up to what happened there a century earlier - the riot and coup d'etat that ended the chance for interracial harmony in the South for the next six decades.
-- The Lowell (MA) mill (Natl. Park Service) makes palpable (and audible!) the reality of early industrial work.

Send your nominations of historical sites that get it right to: Jim Loewen