A People's History of the United States is a 1980 nonfiction book (updated in 2003) by American historian and political scientistHoward Zinn. In the book, Zinn presented what he considered to be a different side of history from the more traditional "fundamental nationalist glorification of country".[1] Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States.[2] It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored.[1] The book was a runner-up in 1980 for the National Book Award. It frequently has been revised, with the most recent edition covering events through 2002. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique for the French version of this book Une histoire populaire des États-Unis.[3] More than two million copies have been sold.
In a 1998 interview, Zinn said he had set "quiet revolution" as his goal for writing A People's History. "Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives."[4] In 2004, Zinn edited a primary sourcecompanion volume with Anthony Arnove, entitled Voices of a People's History of the United States.
A People's History of the United States has been criticized by various pundits and fellow historians. Critics, including professor Chris Beneke and Randall J. Stephens,[5] assert blatant omissions of important historical episodes, uncritical reliance on biased sources, and failure to examine opposing views.[6][7] Conversely, others have defended Zinn and the accuracy and intellectual integrity of his work.[8][9][10]
Overview
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In a letter responding to a 2007 critical review of his A Young People's History of the United States (a release of the title for younger readers) in The New York Times Book Review, Zinn wrote:
Chapter 1, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress" covers early Native American civilization in North America and the Bahamas, the enslavement committed by the crew of Christopher Columbus (whom Zinn accused of genocide), and incidents of violent colonization by early settlers. Instead of restating the same history that has been presented for centuries, Zinn states that he prefers to tell history from the perspective of the Arawaks, which many people are not familiar with. He describes the purpose of Columbus' expedition and his brutality towards the natives after his arrival. Not only does he use firsthand account of witnesses to Columbus' presence in the islands, he also provides statistics of native casualties to present this different side of history. Topics include the Arawaks, Bartolomé de las Casas, the Aztecs, Hernán Cortés, Pizarro, Powhatan, the Pequot, the Narragansett, Metacom, King Philip's War, and the Iroquois.
Chapter 2, "Drawing the Color Line" addresses the slave trade and servitude of poor White people in the Thirteen Colonies. Zinn writes of the methods by which he says racism was created artificially in order to enforce the economic system. He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between enslaved Blacks and White servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation.
Chapter 3, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition" describes Bacon's Rebellion (1676), the economic conditions of the poor in the colonies, and opposition to their poverty. Zinn uses Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion to assert that "class lines hardened through the colonial period".[14]
Chapter 4, "Tyranny Is Tyranny" covers the movement for "leveling" (economic equality) in the colonies and the causes of the American Revolution. Zinn argues that the Founding Fathers agitated for war to distract the people from their own economic problems and to stop popular movements, a strategy that he claims the country's leaders would continue to use in the future.
Chapter 5, "A Kind of Revolution" covers the war and resistance to participating in war, the effects on the Native American people, and the continued inequalities in the new United States. When the land of veterans of the Revolutionary War was seized for non-payment of taxes, it led to instances of resistance to the government, as in the case of Shays' Rebellion. Zinn notes that "Charles Beard warned us that governments—including the government of the United States—are not neutral ... they represent the dominant economic interests, and ... their constitutions are intended to serve these interests."[15][pageneeded]
If you look through high school textbooks and elementary school textbooks in American history, you will find Andrew Jackson the frontiersman, soldier, democrat, man of the people—not Jackson the slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians.
Chapter 7, "As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs" discusses 19th century conflicts between the U.S. government and Native Americans (such as the Seminole Wars) and Indian removal, especially during the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
Chapter 8, "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God" describes the Mexican–American War. Zinn writes that President James Polk agitated for war for the purpose of imperialism. Zinn argues that the war was unpopular, but that some newspapers of that era misrepresented the popular sentiment.[17]
Chapter 9, "Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom" addresses slave rebellions, the abolition movement, the Civil War, and the effect of these events on African-Americans. Zinn writes that the large-scale violence of the war was used to end slavery instead of the small-scale violence of the rebellions because the latter may have expanded beyond anti-slavery, resulting in a movement against the capitalist system. He writes that the war could limit the freedom granted to African-Americans by allowing the government control over how that freedom was gained.
Chapter 14, "War Is the Health of the State" covers World War I and the anti-war movement that happened during it, which was met with the heavily enforced Espionage Act of 1917. Zinn argues that the United States entered the war in order to expand its foreign markets and economic influence.
Chapter 15, "Self-Help in Hard Times" covers the government's campaign to destroy the IWW, and the factors leading to the Great Depression. Zinn states that, despite popular belief, the 1920s were not a time of prosperity, and the problems of the Depression were simply the chronic problems of the poor extended to the rest of the society. Also covered is the Communist Party's attempts to help the poor during the Depression. He criticizes some aspects of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal: "From the first, the NRA was dominated by big business and served their interests."[20] According to Zinn, the New Deal was aimed mainly at stabilizing the economy and "secondly at giving enough help to the lower classes to keep them from turning a rebellion into a real revolution".[21]
Chapter 16, "A People's War?", covers World War II, opposition to it, and the effects of the war on the people. Zinn, a veteran of the war himself, notes that "it was the most popular war the US ever fought",[22] but states that this support may have been manufactured through the institutions of American society. He cites various instances of opposition to fighting (in some cases greater than those during World War I) as proof. Zinn also argues that the US's true intention was not fighting against systematic racism, since the US had this itself, such as with the Jim Crow laws (leading to opposition to the war from African-Americans). In accordance with American revisionist historian Gar Alperovitz, another argument made by Zinn is that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary, as the U.S. government had already known that the Japanese were considering surrender beforehand, and it was "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in".[23] Other subjects from WWII covered include Japanese American internment and the bombing of Dresden. The chapter continues into the Cold War, which Zinn writes was used by the U.S. government to increase control over the American people (for instance, eliminating such radical elements as the Communist Party) and at the same time create a state of permanent war, which allowed for the creation of the military–industrial complex. Zinn believes this was possible because both conservatives and liberals willingly worked together in the name of anti-Communism. Also covered is US involvement in the Greek Civil War, the Korean War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Marshall Plan and the Cuban Revolution.
Chapter 17, "'Or Does It Explode?'" (named after a line from Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" from "Montage of a Dream Deferred", referred to as "Lenox Avenue Mural" by Zinn), covers the Civil Rights Movement. Zinn argues that the government began making reforms against discrimination (although without making fundamental changes) for the sake of changing its international image, but often did not enforce the laws that it passed. Zinn also argues that while nonviolent tactics may have been required for Southern civil rights activists, militant actions (such as those proposed by Malcolm X) were needed to solve the problems of black ghettos. Also covered is the involvement of the Communist Party in the movement, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, COINTELPRO, and the Black Panther Party.
Chapter 18, "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam", covers the Vietnam War and resistance to it. Zinn argues that America was fighting a war that it could not win, as the Vietnamese people were in favor of the government of Ho Chi Minh and opposed the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, thus allowing them to keep morale high. Meanwhile, the American military's morale was very low, as many soldiers were put off by the atrocities which they were made to take part in, such as the My Lai massacre. Zinn also tries to dispel the popular belief that opposition to the war was mainly among college students and middle-class intellectuals, using statistics from the era to show higher opposition from the working class. Zinn argues that the troops themselves also opposed the war, citing desertions and refusals to go to war, as well as movements such as Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Also covered is the US invasions of Laos and Cambodia, Agent Orange, the Pentagon Papers, Ron Kovic, and raids on draft boards.
Chapter 23, "The Coming Revolt of the Guards", covers Zinn's theory on a possible future radical movement against inequality in America. Zinn argues that there will eventually be a movement made up not only of groups previously involved in radical change (such as labor organizers, black radicals, Native Americans, feminists), but also members of the middle class who are starting to become discontented with the state of the nation. Zinn expects this movement to use "demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships".[24]
Chapter 25, "The 2000 Election and the 'War On Terrorism'", covers the 2000 presidential election and the War on Terrorism. Zinn argues that attacks on the U.S. by Arab terrorists (such as the September 11, 2001 attacks) are not caused by a hatred for our freedom (as claimed by President George W. Bush), but by grievances with U.S. foreign policies such as "stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia ... sanctions against Iraq which ... had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; [and] the continued U.S. support of Israel's occupation of land claimed by Palestinians."[25] Other topics covered include Ralph Nader, and the War in Afghanistan.
Critical reception
When A People's History of the United States was published in 1980, future Columbia University historian Eric Foner reviewed it in The New York Times:
Professor Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history, and his text is studded with telling quotations from labor leaders, war resisters and fugitive slaves. There are vivid descriptions of events that are usually ignored, such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the brutal suppression of the Philippine independence movement at the turn of this century. Professor Zinn's chapter on Vietnam—bringing to life once again the free-fire zones, secret bombings, massacres and cover-ups—should be required reading for a new generation of students now facing conscription. Nonetheless, A People's History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience ... Uprisings are either crushed, deflected or co-opted ... Why such movements so often fail to achieve their goals is never adequately explained ... The portrayal of these anonymous Americans, moreover, is strangely circumscribed. Blacks, Indians, women, and laborers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives—people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances—receive little attention. Nor does Professor Zinn stop to explore the ideologies that inspired the various uprisings he details.
Foner continues by remarking that "history from the bottom up, though necessary as a corrective, is as limited in its own way as history from the top down." What is necessary, Foner asserts, is "an integrated account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies, in a continuous historical process, in which each group's experience is shaped in large measure by its relation to others."[26]
Writing in The New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote:
Mr. Zinn was often taken to task for peeling back the rosy veneer of much of American history to reveal sordid realities that had remained hidden for too long.[27]
Also writing for The New York Times, columnist Michael Powell praised the text's impact on changing the perspective of modern histories:
To describe it as a revisionist account is to risk understatement. A conventional historical account held no allure; he concentrated on what he saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. He also shined an insistent light on the revolutionary struggles of impoverished farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters of slavery and war. Such stories are more often recounted in textbooks today; they were not at the time.[28]
Writing in Dissent, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn is too focused on class conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the American political elite. He characterized the book as an overly simplistic narrative of elite villains and oppressed people, with no attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived. Kazin wrote:
The ironic effect of such portraits of rulers is to rob 'the people' of cultural richness and variety, characteristics that might gain the respect and not just the sympathy of contemporary readers. For Zinn, ordinary Americans seem to live only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them.[29]
Kazin argued that A People's History fails to explain why the American political-economic model continues to attract millions of minorities, women, workers, and immigrants, or why the socialist and radical political movements Zinn favors have failed to gain widespread support among the American public.
Sam Wineburg, a professor of history at Stanford University, criticizes Zinn's use of leading questions, cherry-picking of sources and presentation of disputable claims as facts. Wineburg used as an example Zinn's claim that African Americans had "widespread indifference, even hostility" to the American war effort in World War II, which was supported by three quotes. According to Wineburg, Zinn drew the quotes from a book by Lawrence S. Wittner, but omitted evidence from the same pages that African Americans were underrepresented among draft evaders and conscientious objectors. Wineburg argued that the reason for the book's longtime appeal was that it "speaks directly to our inner Holden Caulfield."[30]
Professional historians have often viewed Zinn's work with exasperation or condescension, and Zinn was no innocent in the dynamic. I stood against the wall for a Zinn talk at the University of Oregon around the time of the 1992 Columbus Quincentenary. Listening to Zinn, one would have thought historians still considered Samuel Eliot Morison's 1955 book on Columbus to be definitive. The crowd lapped it up, but Zinn knew better. He missed a chance to explain how the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s have transformed the writing and teaching of history, how his People's History did not spring out of thin air but was an effort to synthesize a widely shared shift in historical sensibilities. Zinn's historical theorizing, conflating objectivity with neutrality and position with bias, was no better. The critics would be churlish, however, not to acknowledge the moving example Zinn set in the civil-rights and Vietnam movements, and they would be remiss not to note the value of A People's History, along with its limitations. Zinn told tales well, stories that, while familiar to historians, often remained unknown to wider publics. He challenged national pieties and encouraged critical reflection about received wisdom. He understood that America's various radicalisms, far from being "un-American," have propelled the nation toward more humane and democratic arrangements. And he sold two-million copies of a work of history in a culture that is increasingly unwilling to read and, consequently, unable to imagine its past very well.[31]
In The New York Times Book Review in a review of A Young People's History of the United States, volumes 1 and 2, novelist Walter Kirn wrote:
That America is not a better place—that it finds itself almost globally despised, mired in war, self-doubt and random violence—is also a fact, of course, but not one that Zinn's brand of history seems equal to. His stick-figure pageant of capitalist cupidity can account, in its fashion, for terrorism—as when, in the second volume, subtitled "Class Struggle to the War on Terror," he notes that Sept. 11 was an assault on "symbols of American wealth and power"—but it doesn't address the themes of religious zealotry, technological change and cultural confusion that animate what I was taught in high school to label "current events" but that contemporary students may as well just call "the weirdness." The line from Columbus to Columbine, from the first Independence Day to the Internet, and from the Boston Tea Party to Baghdad is a wandering line, not a party line. As for the "new possibilities" it points to, I can't see them clearly.[7]
Professors Michael Kazin, Michael Kammen and Mary Grabar condemn the book as a black-and-white story of elite villains and oppressed victims, a story that robs American history of its depth and intricacy and leaves nothing but an empty text simplified to the level of propaganda.[29][32][33]
Other editions and related works
A version of the book titled The Twentieth Century contains only chapters 12–25 ("The Empire and the People" to "The 2000 Election and the 'War on Terrorism'"). Although it was originally meant to be an expansion of the original book, recent editions of A People's History now contain all of the later chapters from it.
In 2004, Zinn and Anthony Arnove published a collection of more than 200 primary source documents titled Voices of a People's History of the United States, available both as a book and as a CD of dramatic readings. Writer Aaron Sarver notes that although Kazin "savaged" Zinn's A People's History of the United States, "one of the few concessions Kazin made was his approval of Zinn punctuating 'his narrative with hundreds of quotes from slaves and Populists, anonymous wage-earners and ... articulate radicals'".[34]
Sarver argued that, whether Zinn intended it or not, Voices served as a useful response to Kazin's critique. "Voices is a vast anthology that tells heartbreaking and uplifting stories of American history. Kazin will be hard-pressed to charge Zinn with politicizing the intelligence here; the volume offers only Zinn's sparse introductions to each piece, letting the actors and their words speak for themselves."[34]
In 2008, Zinn worked with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle on creating A People's History of American Empire, a graphic novel that covers various historic subjects drawn from A People's History of the United States as well as Zinn's own history of his involvement in activism and historic events as covered in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
Zinn worked as the editor for a series of books under the A People's History label. This series expands upon the issues and historic events covered in A People's History of the United States by giving them in-depth coverage, and also covers the history of parts of the world outside the United States. These books include:[citation needed]
A People's History of the Supreme Court by Peter Irons with foreword by Zinn [35]
A People's History of Sports in the United States by Dave Zirin with an introduction by Howard Zinn
The Mexican Revolution: A People's History by Adolfo Gilly
Likewise, other books were inspired by the series:
A People's History of Australia from 1788 to the Present edited by Verity Burgmann. A four-volume series that looks at Australian history thematically, not chronologically.
A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks by Clifford D Connor.
A People's History of the World by Chris Harman. It is endorsed by Zinn.
In July 2007 Seven Stories Press released A Young People's History of the United States, an illustrated, two-volume adaptation of A People's History for young adult readers (ages 10–14). The new version, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff, is updated through the end of 2006, and includes a new introduction and afterword by Zinn.
In his introduction, Zinn writes, "It seems to me it is wrong to treat young readers as if they are not mature enough to look at their nation's policies honestly. I am not worried about disillusioning young people by pointing to the flaws in the traditional heroes." In the afterword, "Rise like lions", he asks young readers to "Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change."
In addition, the New Press released an updated (2007) version of The Wall Charts for A People's History—a 2-piece fold-out poster featuring an illustrated timeline of U.S. history, with an explanatory booklet.
Lessons for the classroom
In 2008, the Zinn Education Project was launched to promote and support the use of A People's History of the United States (and other materials) for teaching in middle and high school classrooms across the U.S. The goal of the project is to give American students Zinn's version of U.S. history.[38] With funds from an anonymous donor who had been a student of Zinn's, the project began by distributing 4,000 packets to teachers in all states and territories. The project now offers teaching guides and bibliographies that can be freely downloaded.[39]
Zinn, Howard (2003). The Twentieth Century. Harper Perennial. ISBN0-06-053034-0
Zinn, Howard (2005). Arnove, Anthony (ed.). Voices of a People's History of the United States. Seven Stories Press. ISBN1-58322-628-1.
A Young People's History of the United States, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff; illustrated, in two volumes; Seven Stories Press, New York, 2007
The People Speak, the 2009 film produced and narrated by Howard Zinn and inspired by A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States
A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror, written as a conservative response to A People's History of the United States
William Jennings Bryan was an American lawyer, orator, and politician. He was a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He served in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895 and as the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, Bryan was often called "the Great Commoner", and because of his rhetorical power and early fame as the youngest presidential candidate, "the Boy Orator".
Howard Zinn was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist intellectual and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States in 1980. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People's History of the United States.
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958 by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda. Antiestablishmentarianism is an expression for such a political philosophy. Anti-establishment positions vary depending on political orientation. For example, during the protests of 1968, anti-establishment positions generally emerged from left-wing, socialist, and anarchist circles. In the 2010s, however, anti-establishment positions generally emerged from right-wing populist circles.
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In United States history, the Gilded Age is described as the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction Era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after an 1873 Mark Twain novel. Historians saw late 19th-century economic expansion as a time of materialistic excesses marked by widespread political corruption.
A people's history, or history from below, is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders. There is an emphasis on disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and otherwise marginal groups. The authors typically have a Marxist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s.
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The Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and formerly enslaved African Americans, including religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, editors, and abolitionists. The conventions provided "an organizational structure through which black men could maintain a distinct black leadership and pursue black abolitionist goals." Colored conventions occurred in thirty-one states across the United States and in Ontario, Canada. The movement involved more than five thousand delegates and tens of thousands of attendees.
References
1 2 Howard Powell (January 27, 2010). "Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87". The New York Times. Mr. Zinn, delighted in ... lancing what he considered platitudes, not the least that American history was a heroic march toward democracy ... 'Our nation had gone through an awful lot—the Vietnam War, civil rights, Watergate—yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist glorification of country,' Mr. Zinn recalled in an interview with The New York Times. 'I got the sense that people were hungry for a different, more honest take.'
↑ The Social Studies Professional (204–208). National Council for the Social Studies: 19–22. 2008.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
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