Howard Zinn: “A People’s History of the United States”

I was a teacher for a few years in the early 90s - an “adjunct professor of English and History”. I liked teaching but not always being a teacher; that endless stack of blue books was a chore. I also wanted to buy groceries and pay rent, and being an Adjunct is like having a music career; you’ve got to love what you’re doing because those early years are tough.

After my first year teaching Freshman Comp I landed a history gig a few days before that semester’s start. This would mean a lot fewer blue books - a plus - but little time to “prepare” a class that would run from Columbus to the day before yesterday. I had a whole three days.

I got to thinking about this when I stumbled onto the July 4th Special: Readings From Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States” over at Democracy Now. Because that semester, A People’s History of the United States saved me. It became my constant reference, and truth be told it remains so to this day.

Even back then I wanted to challenge people to consider alternative views, not just blast them with the same old facts and events. So Zinn’s first chapter - which from page one gets you to sit up and pay attention - became required reading for that and every subsequent semester I taught. It’s a book I still read, and you should too. It’s as critical for a student as for a member of a democracy.

Here’s why: If you think it’s a crime to criticize your government this is not the book for you. If you think it’s your duty to help shape and redirect improper laws and actions, then this is a must read.

Right off the bat, from the opening paragraph, there’s the kind of thing to make a reactionary swoon:

I hear it now: Shouts of “revisionist history” across the web. Well, was Columbus a saint? For many years kids were taught an expurgated Columbus story, that he discovered America, that he was a brilliant navigator, and a hero. Was that the truth? Or the quote above?

How about both.

History - just like our every day lives - is not a collection of neatly cleaved stories out of a TV sitcom. Human experience is rich, and complex, and full of contradictions. Those we call heroes one day can break your heart the next. Just look at your parents. When it comes to people - and what’s history if not a story about people? - nothing’s ever simple. This is what grown-ups understand, and why the netroots these days reject commercial infotainment and the mainstream press as being written for a childlike audience with childlike simplicity. What’s that kind of approach get you? Eight years of a social and political disaster, for one. The same holds for “traditional” history, because unless we have an honest, self-critical understanding of where we came from we’ll just keeping barreling on to the next catastrophe.

So Zinn would reject the term “revisionist history” outright because it makes the assumption that everything is already known and there can be no new ideas. But that’s ridiculous. We don’t reject new technology as “revisionist technology”. When ice is found on other planets we don’t call it “revisionist science”. We’re constantly making new discoveries, whether in a test tube or in the library. “Revisionist” history is a claim for reactionaries to resist new ideas which might - heaven forbid - lead to social change.

Zinn ignores the traditional stories from the standard texts and paints a picture based on primary sources, from newspaper articles or journals and diaries of the times. This means history through the words of people as they lived it, rather than interpretations of scholars. This is what a “people’s” history is all about.

That’s what makes Zinn’s book such an important contribution to our collective understanding of the past. It’s OK to be proud of our past and to be happy with the personal freedoms we have. Lincoln WAS a great leader, if you ask me. Washington WAS a fine first president. I’m very pleased to live in a country where I can write this very post without fear of incarceration. But we didn’t get these freedoms out of the establishment’s generosity. It took a lot of pushing and shoving - much of it ugly - to attain most of what we take for granted now. It’s going to take the same watchfulness to make sure they stick around, too.

Zinn’s book wasn’t the first to make these points but his book is the most readable and engaging one I know and thus its success. In fact it’s a page-turner, a must read for anyone who wants a fuller, more honest view about where we came from and where we’re headed. It’s one of the most important book I’ve ever read. It may be for you too.

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