A People's History of the United
States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American
historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to
present
American
history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream
histories.
A People's History has become a major success
and was a runner-up in 1980 for the
National Book Award. It has been adopted
for reading in some high schools and colleges across the United
States and has been frequently revised, with the most recent
edition covering events through
2003. In 2003,
Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du
Monde Diplomatique for the French
version of this book,
Une histoire populaire des
Etats-Unis. Over one million copies have been sold.
In a 1998
interview prior to a speaking engagement at the University of
Georgia
, Zinn told Catherine Parayre 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." In 2004, Zinn
published a companion volume with
Anthony
Arnove, titled
Voices of a
People's History of the United States. The book parallels
A People's History in structure, supplementing it with
material from frequently overlooked primary sources.
Overview
Columbus to the Robber Barons
Chapter 1,
"Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress" covers early Native American
civilization in North America and the Bahamas
, the
genocide and slavery committed by the crew of Christopher Columbus, and incidents of
violent colonization by early settlers. Topics include the
Arawaks,
Bartolomé de las Casas, the
Aztecs,
Hernando
Cortes,
Pizarro,
Powhatan, the
Pequot, the
Narragansett,
Metacom,
King Philip's
War, and the
Iroquois.
Chapter 2, "Drawing the Color Line" addresses early slavery of
African Americans and servitude of
poor British people in the
Thirteen
Colonies. Zinn writes of the methods by which he says racism
was artificially created in order to enforce the economic system.
He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded
instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and
white servants in escaping from and in opposing their
subjugation.
Chapter 3, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition" describes
Bacon's Rebellion, the
economic conditions of the poor in the colonies,
and opposition to their poverty.
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 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 wrote 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."
Chapter 6, "The Intimately Oppressed" describes resistance to
inequalities in the lives of women in the early years of the U.S.
Zinn tells
the stories of women who resisted the status quo, including
Polly Baker, Anne Hutchinson, Mary
Dyer, Amelia Bloomer, Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard
, Harriot Hunt, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Sarah Grimké, Angelina Grimké, Dorothea Dix, Frances
Wright, Lucretia Mott, and
Sojourner Truth.
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
expansionism. Zinn argues that the war was
unpopular but that newspapers of that era misrepresented the
popular sentiment.
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 10, "The Other Civil War", covers the
Anti-Rent movement, the
Dorr Rebellion, the
Flour Riot of 1837, the
Molly Maguires, the rise of
labor unions, the
Lowell
girls movement, and other
class
struggles centered around the various
depression of the 19th Century. He
describes the abuse of government power by corporations and the
efforts by workers to resist those abuses. Here is an excerpt on
the subject of the
Great
Railroad Strike of 1877.
[99918]
Chapter 11, "Robber Barons and Rebels" covers the rise of
industrial corporations such as the railroads and banks and their
transformation into the nation's dominant institutions, with
corruption resulting in both industry and government.
Also covered are the
popular movements and individuals that opposed corruption, such as
the Knights of Labor, Edward Bellamy, the Socialist Labor Party, the
Haymarket
martyrs
, the Homestead
strikers, Alexander Berkman,
Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, the
American Railway Union, the
Farmers' Alliance, and the
Populist Party.
The Twentieth Century
Chapter 12, "The Empire and the People", covers
American imperialism during the
Spanish-American War and the
Philippine-American War, as
well as in other lands such as Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Zinn
portrays the wars as being racist and imperialist and opposed by
large segments of the American people.
Chapter 13, "The Socialist Challenge", covers the rise of
socialism and
anarchism
as popular political ideologies in the United States. Covered in
the chapter are the
American Federation of Labor
(which Zinn argues provided too exclusive of a union for non-white,
female, and unskilled workers; Zinn argues in Chapter 24 that this
changes in the 1990s),
Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW),
Mary Harris "Mother"
Jones,
Joe Hill, the Socialist Labor
Party,
W. E. B.
Du Bois, and the
Progressive Party
(which Zinn portrays as driven by fear of radicalism).
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
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 problems of the poor
(who Zinn states are in permanent depression) extended to the rest
of the society. Also covered is the
Communist Party's attempts to help the
poor during the Depression.
Chapter 16, "A People's War?", covers
World
War II, opposition to the war, 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," 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 WWI) as proof.
Zinn also argues against the US's stated intentions to fight racism
in Europe, as it was not fighting against systematic racism in the
US such as the
Jim Crow laws (leading
to opposition to the war from African-Americans). Another argument
made by Zinn is that the
atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary, as the US government
had already known that the Japanese were considering surrender
beforehand. Other subjects from WWII covered include
Japanese American internment
and the
bombing of
Dresden. The chapter continues into the
Cold War. Here, Zinn reveals how the US government
used the Cold War 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 modern
military-industrial complex.
Zinn believes this was possible because both conservatives and
liberals willingly worked together in hysterical reaction to
anti-Communism. Also covered is the
US's involvement in the
Greek Civil
War, the
Korean War,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and
the
Marshall Plan.
Chapter 17, "'Or Does It Explode?'" (named after a line from
Langston Hughes' poem "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 for
the war was very low, as many soldiers were put off by the
atrocities that 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 amongst 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 19, "Surprises", covers other movements that happened
during the 1960s, such as
second-wave feminism, the
prison reform/
prison abolition movement, the
Native American rights movement, and the
counterculture. People and events from the
feminist movement covered include
Betty
Friedan's
The Feminine
Mystique,
Women's
International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell,
Patricia Robinson, the
National Domestic Workers
Union,
National
Organization for Women,
Roe
v. Wade,
Susan Brownmiller's
Against Our Will, and
Our Bodies, Ourselves.
People and
events from the prison movement covered include George Jackson, the Attica Prison
riots
, and Jerry Sousa.
People and events from the Native American rights movement covered
include the
National
Indian Youth Council,
Sid Mills,
Akwesasne Notes,
Indians of All Tribes, the
First Convocation
of American Indian Scholars,
Frank James, the
American Indian Movement, and the
Wounded Knee incident. People
and events from the counterculture covered include
Pete Seeger,
Bob Dylan,
Joan Baez,
Malvina Reynolds,
Jessica Mitford's
The American Way of Death,
Jonathan Kozol,
George Dennison, and
Ivan Illich.
Chapter 20, "The Seventies: Under Control?", covers American
disillusion with the government during the 1970s and political
corruption that was exposed during the decade. Zinn argues that the
resignation of
Richard Nixon and the
exposure of crimes committed by the CIA and FBI during the decade
were done by the government in order to regain support for the
government from the American people without making fundamental
changes to the system; according to Zinn,
Gerald Ford's presidency continued the same
basic policies of the Nixon administration.
Other topics covered
include protests against the Honeywell Corporation, Angela Davis, Committee to Re-elect the
President, the Watergate
scandal, International Telephone
and Telegraph's involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the
Mayagüez
incident
, Project MKULTRA,
the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, the Trilateral Commission's The Governability of
Democracies, and the People's Bi-Centennial.
Chapter 21, "Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus", covers
the
Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan, and
George H. W. Bush
administrations and their effects on both the American people and
foreign countries. Zinn argues that the Democratic and Republican
parties keep the government essentially the same (that is, they
handled the government in a way that was favorable for corporations
rather than for the people) and continued to have a militant
foreign policy no matter which party was in power. Zinn uses
similarities between the three administrations' methods as proof of
this.
Other topics covered include the Fairness Doctrine, the Indonesian invasion of East
Timor, Noam Chomsky, global warming, Roy
Benavidez, the Trident
submarine, the Star
Wars program, the Sandinista National
Liberation Front, the Iran-Contra
Affair, the War Powers Act, US
invasion of Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, the Invasion of Grenada, Óscar Romero, the El Mozote
massacre
, the Bombing of
Libya, the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States invasion of
Panama, and the Gulf War.
Chapter 22, "The Unreported Resistance", covers several movements
that happened during the Carter-Reagan-Bush years that were ignored
by much of the mainstream media.
Topics covered include the anti-nuclear movement, the Plowshares Movement, the Council for a Nuclear
Weapons Freeze, the Physicians for Social
Responsibility, George
Kistiakowsky, The Fate of
the Earth, Marian Wright
Edelman, the Citizens'
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, the Three Mile
Island accident
, the Winooski
Forty-four, Abbie Hoffman,
Amy Carter, the Piedmont Peace Project, Anne Braden, César Chávez, the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee, Teatro Campesino,
LGBT social movements, the
Stonewall riots, Food Not Bombs, the anti-war movement during the Gulf War, David Barsamian, opposition to Columbus Day, Indigenous Thought, Rethinking Schools, and the Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990.
Chapter 23, "The Coming Revolt of the Guards", covers Zinn's theory
on a possible future radical movement against the inequality in
America. Zinn argues that there will eventually be a movement made
up not only of previous groups that were 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."
Chapter 24, "The Clinton Presidency", covers the effects of the
Bill Clinton administration on the US
and the world. Zinn argues that, despite Clinton's claims that he
would bring changes to the country, his presidency kept many things
the same as in Reagan-Bush era.
Topics covered include Jocelyn Elders, the Waco Siege
, the Oklahoma City bombing
, the Crime Bill of 1996,
the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996, the 1993 bombing of
Iraq, Operation Gothic
Serpent, the Rwandan Genocide,
the War in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund
, the North American Free Trade
Agreement, the 1998
bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton,
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Stand for Children, Jesse Jackson, the Million Man March, Mumia Abu-Jamal, John Sweeney, the Service Employees
International Union, the Union of
Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, the Worker Rights Consortium, the
Poor
People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the Telecommunications Act of
1996, Spare Change, the
North
American Street Newspaper Association, the National Coalition for the
Homeless, anti-globalization,
and WTO
Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity.
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 US 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 US 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 Palestinian
land." Other topics covered include
Ralph
Nader, the
War in
Afghanistan, and the
USA PATRIOT
Act.
Critical reception
When
A People's History of the United States was first
published in 1980, the
New York
Times reviewer,
Columbia
University historian
Eric Foner,
described the book as filled with telling quotations and vivid
descriptions of usually ignored events, and said that "Zinn writes
with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of
academic history." However, referring to Zinn's focus on "the
distinctive experience of blacks, women, Indians,workers and other
neglected groups," Foner said, "The portrayal of these anonymous
Americans 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", adding, "
A
People's History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the
American experience." Summing up, Foner found the approach to be
limited, and said further that the book needed "an integrated
account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew
Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies."
Writing
in the Washington Post Book
World, reviewer Michael Kammen,
a professor of American History at Cornell
, wrote: "I wish that I could pronounce Zinn's book
a great success, but it is not. It is a synthesis of the
radical and revisionist historiography of the past decade. . . Not
only does the book read like a scissors and paste-pot job, but even
less attractive, so much attention to historians, historiography
and historical polemic leaves precious little space for the
substance of history. . . . We do deserve a people's
history; but not a singleminded, simpleminded history, too often of
fools, knaves and Robin Hoods. We need a judicious people's history
because the people are entitled to have their history
whole; not just those parts that will anger or embarrass
them. . . . If that is asking for the moon, then we will cheerfully
settle for
balanced history."
In a 2004
article in Dissent
critiquing the 5th edition of A People's History of the United
States, Georgetown University
history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn's
book is too focused on class
conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the
American political elite. He also 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 writes, "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." Kazin argues
further 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.
Responding to Kazin's criticism, Dale McCartney, editor of the
Canadian online magazine,
Seven Oaks, writes: "Zinn is not
neglecting a more objective perspective on American history; he's
rejecting it in favor of an openly political stance that reclaims
the history of oppressed peoples, regardless of race or gender. His
popularity is testament to both the appeal of such a reading of
American history, and the desperate thirst of working class people,
people of colour, women and the many other victims of modern
society's ravages for a history in which they are at the centre. I
would go so far as to argue that not only has Kazin underestimated
the importance of this role for Zinn's book, but that the academic
tradition of objectivity (read: liberalism that favors white men)
has played a key role in marginalizing oppressed peoples and
derailing social movements. Zinn's work is an important corrective
to this destructive tradition in historical writing."
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'"). Though 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.'"
Whether Zinn intended it or not,
Voices serves as a useful
response to Kazin’s critique. As Sarver observes, "
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."
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 from
A People's History of the United States as
well as Zinn's own history of involvement in activism and historic
events as covered in his autobiography
You Can't Be Neutral on
a Moving Train.
Zinn has worked as the series 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:
Younger readers' version
After many years of requests from parents and teachers, 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 afterward by Howard
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.
Current editions
- Zinn, Howard (2003). The Twentieth Century. Harper
Perennial. ISBN 0060530340
- 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
- Vol. 1: Columbus to the Spanish-American War.
ISBN 978-1-58322-759-6
- Vol. 2: Class Struggle to the War on Terror.
ISBN 978-1-58322-760-2
- Teaching Editions
- A People's History of the United States: Teaching
Edition
- A People's History of the United States, Abridged Teaching
Edition, Updated Edition
- A People's History of the United States: Volume 1: American
Beginnings to Reconstruction, Teaching Edition
- A People's History of the United States, Vol. 2:
The Civil War to the Present, Teaching Edition
- A People's History of the United States: The Wall
Charts; designed by Howard Zinn and George Kirschner; New Press (2007). ISBN 978-1-56584-171-0
See also
References
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