Better late than never, I say. (Somehow, his obit didn't appear here when I searched, just now.)

First half or so:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/books/james-w-loewen-dead.html

By Robert D. McFadden
Aug. 20, 2021

James W. Loewen, a sociologist and civil rights champion who took high school teachers and textbook publishers to task for distorting American history, particularly the struggle of Black people in the South, by oversimplifying their experience and omitting the ugly parts, died on Thursday in Bethesda, Md. He was 79.

His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Ellen Adler, his publisher at the New Press, who said he died after an unspecified “long illness.”

“Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat the 11th grade,” Dr. Loewen wrote in “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” (1995), the best known of his dozen books attacking historical misconceptions.

Dr. Loewen was a relentless contrarian who challenged anyone who imagined academic life as a passage through genteel lectures on settled matters for drowsy students on leafy campuses. He charged through history like a warrior, dismantling fictions and exposing towns for excluding minorities; teachers and historians for dumbing lessons down; and defendants in 50 class-action lawsuits who, according to his expert testimony, victimized people in civil rights, voting rights and job discrimination cases.

A Northerner fascinated with Mississippi, he wrote his first book about the Chinese population there. He wrote another about how America’s historic sites distort our knowledge of the past. And it was a mistake to get him started on the origin of Thanksgiving: Plymouth was already a village with cleared fields when the Pilgrims found it deserted by plague victims. No turkey was served in 1621 — perhaps it was duck. And there was no pie. The settlers had no wheat flour for crust and no oven for baking. The holiday Americans celebrate has nothing to do with the Pilgrims. It was invented 242 years later by Abraham Lincoln to celebrate the North’s victory at Gettysburg.

“History is by far our worst-taught subject in high school,” Dr. Loewen told The Atlantic in 2018. “I think we’re stupider in thinking about the past than we are, say, in thinking about Shakespeare, or algebra, or other subjects. Historians tend to make everything so nuanced that the idea of truth almost disappears.”

The son of a doctor and a librarian, Dr. Loewen was raised in Illinois and educated in Minnesota and at Harvard, and he began his half-century as a university professor of sociology in 1968 at Tougaloo College, a historically Black liberal arts institution in Mississippi. Facing his first freshman class, he posed a seemingly simple question for 17 students: “What is Reconstruction?”

“Well,” he recalled them saying, “Reconstruction was the period right after the Civil War when Blacks took over the government of the Southern states. But they were too soon out of slavery, and so they screwed up and white folks had to take control again.”

Dr. Loewen’s heart sank, he told NPR in 2018. It was a glimpse of the enormous task before him: setting the historical record straight for Mississippi’s — and America’s — young students..

Patiently, he explained to his class: Black people never took over the Southern states. They all had white governors, and all but one had white legislative majorities. Reconstruction governments did not “screw up.” They created the best constitutions the South had ever had, and better governments than any others in the South in the 19th century. And whites did not put things right by taking control again. The people who took charge were white supremacists, and some were original Ku Klux Klansmen.

As to the problem of textbook distortions, Dr. Loewen found that state review and purchasing panels controlled the use of public schools’ books. The history text widely in use for years in Mississippi described Black people as complacent or troublemaking. It said Black officeholders during Reconstruction were corrupt, and it called the Ku Klux Klan a “secret social and fraternal club.” Lynching was not even mentioned...

(snip)

And there are 40 comments. Here's one:

Don Villarejo
Davis, California Aug. 23, 2021

"As a high school student in Chicago back in the mid-1950s, my U.S. History class not only taught that slaves were happy until Northern 'carpetbaggers' agitated, he also enforced seating in the class according to his assessment of ability. He assigned Black students to seats he described as for the least able students. This is how we (were) forced to accept segregation while studying U.S. History!"

He wrote about 11 books, not counting those he edited or only contributed to.

https://justice.tougaloo.edu/
(his site)

https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/author/11
(Loewen's blog articles - one, from 2019, is "Bad Reading Drives Out Good")

https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/154261
(Q&A from 2019)

https://www.google.com/search?q=james+loewen+interview&sca_esv=575223954&hl=en&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj08ZiMjIWCAxU0GVkFHZspCgQQ0pQJegQIAhAC&biw=1920&bih=839&dpr=1#ip=1
(more interviews)

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/james-w-loewen/
(two reviews)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8458.James_W_Loewen
(reader reviews)

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=575223954&hl=en&q=james+loewen&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNlYr2iIWCAxVcrokEHaEhBfoQ0pQJegQICBAB&biw=1920&bih=839&dpr=1
(videos)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Loewen

More obits:

https://www.google.com/search?q=james+loewen+79&sca_esv=575223954&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=839&ei=96wyZfykOYafptQP8N6cyAs&ved=0ahUKEwi8_Kj-h4WCAxWGj4kEHXAvB7kQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=james+loewen+79&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiD2phbWVzIGxvZXdlbiA3OTIFEAAYogQyBRAAGKIEMggQABiJBRiiBEi2UFC3BVjoTXABeAGQAQCYAW-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&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#ip=1