It's not just the voices of justice whose words are omitted or placed in a context that serves the powerful. Some historical figures get praise where none is due. Loewen notes that President Woodrow Wilson is often credited with the progressive era reform of women's suffrage. Public pressure, aroused by hunger strikes and other actions of the movement, convinced Wilson that to oppose women's suffrage was politically unwise.
Textbooks typically fail to show the interrelationship between the hero and the people.
By giving credit to the hero, authors tell less than half the story. Textbooks canonize Patrick Henry for his 'Give me liberty or give me death' speech. Almost no one would today because only two of the twelve textbooks even mention the inconsistency. Much about Thomas Jefferson's slave holdings has come to light as DNA tests have identified some of his descendants as being born to one of his slaves. Textbooks stress that Jefferson was a humane master, privately tormented by slavery and opposed to its expansion, not the type to destroy families by selling slaves.