Voices of a People's History of the United States

by Howard Zinn

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Local notes

973 Zin

Barcode

5814

Collection

Publication

Seven Stories Press (2009), Edition: 2, 672 pages

Description

Historian Howard Zinn and writer Anthony Arnove are joined by artists and actors to present dramatic readings of selections from their book, Voices of a People's History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2004

Physical description

672 p.; 5.5 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member gcorrell
During the mid 1800’s, some escaped slaves reached out to their former masters. In letters that rend the heart, they expressed an understanding that is both pitiless and generous, to the men and women who sold their parents, wives, and children, who abused and tormented them, worked them to
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death, and justified it in the name of a loving God.
They are the real thing, these letters: forgiveness, rage, acceptance, stern judgment, Because they are written in the gracious, formal manner of the 19th century, they combine dignity, moral outrage and positive purpose that is impossible to find today.
We cannot imagine the lives of American slaves, the heroic, deadly work of traveling a thousand miles to Canada. That they should survive, make a new life, travel back, return with family, and yet still reach out across that immeasurable distance to connect with and confront their abusers is proof, like no other, of the healing power of freedom.

Freedom is the principal theme of “Voices of a People’s History,” Howard Zinn’s illuminating anthology of first-person, eyewitness, and creative accounts. And surprising unknown details are what make this book special, invaluable.

During the colonial period, pre- and post-, there were hundreds of insurrections; after the war many disenfranchised merchants saw the landed gentry as essentially British, and the rebellions (Shay’s, et al) were continuing the good fight to make the promise of equal opportunity real. It was messy. These frontline dispatches, some decades later, underscore how pragmatic our founding Fathers really were. Pat Robertson notwithstanding, self-satisfied piety was a detriment when fair play was being legislated one bloody detail at a time. Understanding the Founding Documents as defensive writings, intended to channel universal revolutionary fervor, is a new perspective for most of us.

It’s such a rich volume. I can create a litany of its better pieces: the horrified officer’s letters during the “War” with Mexico; Robinson’s “Factory Girls”; the bread riot descriptions that reveal a south ripped by profiteers and landowner abuses during the Civil War; the astonishing, pivotal strike in Flint in 1936-7, that elevated Reuther, enabled mainstream Unions, and saw the police fire point-blank into unarmed strikers. Genora Dollinger’s account of her baptism under fire as a Union speaker, where she calls for the strikers families to bravely walk past the police lines, backs to the guns, in order to save their husbands, is unforgettable. This was not long ago, far away. The unions, its members, made us a better country. Reagan’s grandstanding with the air traffic controllers was the refined tactic of the thugs of yesterday. They don’t make it so easy for us now, no brutal face. But the campaign to diminish worker protections and disenfranchise unions continues, and Zinn reminds us of its tradition and context.

Some should be read aloud every year, perhaps an Americans Day (as opposed to America Day, July 4th). In every public square, high school, let’s temporarily interrupt the Rush lie fest on our public airwaves. Let’s take turns and read aloud from this volume: Truth’s “Ain’t I a woman?”; Starr’s “Back of the Yards”; Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam. Most of all, we need Dalton Trumbo (Zinn’s excerpt from “Johnny Got His Gun” is perfect). Many of these selections speak with immediacy about our current adventurism overseas, but Trumbo’s is rabble-rousing, heartbreaking literature that wakes us up.

There are annoyances: in his intro, absurdly, “…there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation"; introducing Mumia Abu-Jamal without a mention of the legit controversies about his murder conviction. But Zinn has made an important, immensely readable, and timely contribution to our self-understanding.
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Pages

672

Rating

½ (54 ratings; 3.9)
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