A People's History of the United States

“If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win.”

Zinn’s goal in A People’s History is not just to recount the history of the United States. It is to create a new history designed to motivate and encourage Americans to organize and demonstrate against perceived injustices. Zinn reinforces the notion that he is not trying to write an impartial history. Rather, he is writing a history designed to move people to activism and onto the streets. It is a history written for the future not to explain the past.

“We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive for profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.”

Zinn’s discussion of slavery pulls together multiple threads. It represents a unique twist on his otherwise class-based lens. While slavery has obvious implications in that it creates an exploited lower class, American slavery was also defended on the grounds of racial superiority. In this way, American class relations have always carried a racial dimension not seen in other places. Placing the origins of slavery in terms of class, not race, also suits Zinn’s larger argument that American racism is a tool to keep impoverished white people and Black Americans apart so they do not organize together.

“Bacon’s ‘Declaration of the People’ of July 1676 shows a mixture of populist resentment against the rich and frontier hatred of the Indians. It indicted the Berkeley administration for unjust taxes, for putting favorites in high positions, for monopolizing the beaver trade, and for not protecting the western farmers from the Indians.”

Bacon’s Rebellion is an important moment in the evolution of America. It is the first popular movement in American history and the first attempt by Americans to resist the domination of coastal elites. Bacon’s grievances, his complaints about Native Americans aside, also contain an element of timeless grief regarding the use of elite economic and political power at the expense of those who live on society’s frontiers.

“In America, too, the reality behind the words of the Declaration of Independence (issued in the same year as Adam Smith’s capitalist manifesto, The Wealth of Nations) was that a rising class of important people needed to enlist on their side enough Americans to defeat England, without disturbing too much the relations of wealth and power that had developed over 150 years of colonial history.”

For Zinn, the American Revolution was a kind of ideological betrayal. Bacon’s Rebellion highlighted that most Americans had as much reason to resist their local elites as they had to resist the British. Elites, for their part, were heavily taxed under British policies such as the Stamp Tax. They wanted to overthrow British authority and needed the lower classes to do so. Elites adopted the popular rhetoric of democracy and representative government to win over the support of the masses. But when it came to implementing those reforms, elites adopted a form of democracy that they could control.

“Here, in the war for liberty, was conscription, as usual, cognizant of wealth. With the impressment riots against the British still remembered, impressment of seamen by the American navy was taking place by 1779.”

A common myth of the revolution was that most Americans supported the cause. But this was not the case. John Adam’s believed that only one-third of Americans supported the patriot cause and fewer would take arms against Britain. To fill the need for manpower, the revolutionary Congress adopted strict measures, including conscription, to produce recruits. But these measures typically did not weigh on the sons of the elite. Rather, it was the sons of the impoverished and working class who were forced to fight and die for the cause of elite freedom.

“It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status. In this invisibility they were something like black slaves (and thus slave women faced a double oppression).”

This quote does double duty. Zinn first highlights what he feels is a major gap in the literature regarding women in colonial America. One of the things Zinn hopes to correct is the inequality he sees in scholarship. Zinn also highlights another component of his argument, the intersectionality of identity groups. Women, he argues, share much of the same oppression as African Americans.

“Jackson’s 1814 treaty with the Creeks started something new and important. It granted Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out—introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western capitalism.”

Jackson’s treaty set a pattern across the South. Where large tracts of land had previously been held by the tribe as a group, after 1814 a succession of treaties privatized that land. This policy atomized the collective interest of the tribe and turned every member towards their self-interest. Then, a decade later, when local white settlers decided native land was valuable, Indigenous groups lacked the organization required to resist white expansion.

“Such a national government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elites of the North. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism.” 

Zinn, as ever, is skeptical of government solutions to American problems. He has a negative opinion of Abraham Lincoln, who many agree was the pinnacle of moderation. For Zinn, the federal government cannot be the tool that brings equality to America’s Black citizens. It must be accomplished through popular movements.

“The southern white oligarchy used its economic power to organize the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups. Northern politicians began to weigh the advantage of the political support of impoverished blacks—maintained in voting and office only by force—against the more stable situation of a South returned to white supremacy, accepting Republican dominance and business legislation.”

The Civil War seemed to have radically changed the racial hierarchy of the South. Within fifteen years, the tables turned, and rich Southern white people once again controlled the helm of politics and society. Zinn describes this process as a betrayal in which Northern Republicans placed business interests ahead of justice. To Zinn, the lesson of Reconstruction is that any policy based on the protection and good grace of government is doomed to failure, as that policy will only be maintained so long as it means profit for the elite.

“In an economic system not rationally planned for human need, but developing fitfully, chaotically out of the profit motive, there seemed to be no way to avoid recurrent booms and slumps [...] One way to achieve stability was to decrease competition, organize the businesses, move toward monopoly.”

One of the most powerful tools of activists, as well as the elite, is organization. During the final debates over slavery in the years before the Civil War, many businesses decided that the key to their long-term profitability was to decrease competition. What mattered ultimately in the 19th century was not the interests of the average American or even the individual worker but profitability for the bosses at the top.

“In 1877, the same year blacks learned they did not have enough strength to make real the promise of equality in the Civil War, working people learned they were not united enough, not powerful enough, to defeat the combination of private capital and government power. But there was more to come.”

1877 was a critical year for activism in the United States. Politically, 1877 was the year of the Great Compromise, in which Republicans traded racial justice for political and economic power. It was also a vital year for labor organizing in the United States. In both cases, elites proved that they were strong enough to overcome popular sentiment and maintain the status quo in the United States.

“Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.”

Education and the authorship of history are important issues for Zinn. His work is ultimately an attempt to present an alternative curriculum for American activists. But he also highlights how the elite have themselves attempted to use history as a weapon to divide and distract the working class. The goal of patriotic history, to Zinn, is to create a popular narrative that Americans are living a privileged life and that resistance is unneeded and potentially disastrous.

“American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us.”

The American overseas empire was born in the late 19th century when capitalists looked jealously at the empires of rival European powers. These powers, especially Britain, maintained vast empires that afforded them substantial supplies of raw materials as well as a market for finished goods. American business elites hoped to acquire the same for themselves and to increase their profits by conquering other markets wherever the opportunity arose.

“War and Jingoism might postpone, but could not fully suppress, the class anger that came from the realities of ordinary life.”

War and activism are linked in important ways throughout Zinn’s narrative. Through the 19th century, war tended to tap into the energy of the lower class. Patriotism or jingoism replaced activism and class consciousness. However, this trend tended not to last beyond the duration of the war. After a few years, patriotism wore off and class concerns began to reassert themselves. 

“There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few.”

The birth of the IWW in 1905 was a critical turning point for Zinn. It represented the culmination of decades of labor activism and organization and so was the pinnacle of the movement. But the IWW was also a new chapter in organization and activism. It not only spurred new strikes and new unionization efforts but also introduced new and more radical rhetoric built around class solidarity.

“Perhaps free speech could not be tolerated by any reasonable person if it constituted a ‘clear and present danger’ to life and liberty; after all free speech much compete with all other vital rights. But was not the war itself a ‘clear and present danger,’ indeed more clear and more present and more dangerous to life than any argument against it? Did citizens not have a right to object to war, a right to be a danger to dangerous policies?”

The Espionage and Sedition Acts were passed during the initial crisis of World War I. They limited citizens’ speech, criminalizing any attempt to distribute anti-war propaganda or agitate against the enlistment of soldiers. These acts were challenged in the Supreme Court on the grounds that citizens had the right to speak out against policies they did not agree with. The court rejected this logic, suggesting that speech could be restricted so long as the government claimed the country faced a clear and present danger and that speech might constrain their ability to combat that danger.

“There had been reforms. The patriotic fervor of the war had been invoked. The courts and jails had been used to reinforce the idea that certain ideas, certain kinds of resistance, could not be tolerated.”

The IWW had rallied the working class to a common banner. It had succeeded in fulfilling the dream of creating one powerful union, and prior to the war it had seemed unbeatable. But World War I changed the calculus. Amid the fervor of war, dissent and protest were deemed unacceptable. Americans turned against the activists who had earlier tried to assist them. And the government worked to excise the activists that had threatened the elite by turning the apparatus of the judicial system against those who spoke out or violated the norms of polite resistance.

“The federal government was trying—without making fundamental changes—to control an explosive situation, to channel anger into the traditional cooling mechanism of the ballot box, the polite petition, the officially endorsed quiet gathering. When black civil rights leaders planned a huge march on Washington in the summer of 1963 to protest the failure of the nation to solve the race problem, it was quickly embraced by President Kennedy and other national leaders, and turned into a friendly assemblage.”

Zinn is highly skeptical of any attempt to reform the system. He strikes a critical tone of the moderate civil rights movement almost completely unheard of in traditional narratives about Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for racial justice in America. His attack on the moderate nature of the March on Washington and King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech is particularly interesting. Zinn argues that moderate activism based on legal or constitutional changes is a waste of time. It produces the form of equality without the substance. Radical action and strong language are the only ways to destroy the system, and that is what is required to produce real change.

“In fact the United States had lost the war in both the Mekong Valley and the Mississippi Valley. It was the first clear defeat to the global American empire formed after World War II. It was administered by revolutionary peasants abroad, and by an astonishing movement of protest at home.”

The Vietnam War was a crucial moment for American activism. The classic interplay between war and activism suggested that the war in Vietnam should undermine the radicalism that had built during the civil rights movement. Yet the opposite happened. The American people maintained their energy and activism through the war, despite challenges from the elites. In this passage, Zinn attributes the victory of the anti-war movement to the union of radicalism at home and abroad, which undermined the war effort.

“On September 9th, 1971, a series of conflicts between prisoners and guards ended with a group of inmates breaking through a gate with a defective weld and taking over one of the four prison yards, with forty guards as hostages. Then followed five days in which the prisoners set up a remarkable community in the yard.”

The Attica prison riot may seem like an unusual place to find a model community or inspirational radicalism. Yet Zinn is indeed inspired by the changes the prisoners tried to implement. They did not, despite the opportunity, punish guards or attempt to leverage their control over the prison yard for freedom. Rather, the prisoners fought for equality in the prison, an end to racial discrimination by guards and staff, and a fairer parole system. Prisoners established a race-blind community that eliminated the distinction between guards and prisoners, white and Black. In this unusual place, Zinn finds inspiration for America.

“This suggests that both parties were trying to manufacture an anti-human-needs mood by constant derogatory use of the word ‘welfare,’ and then to claim they were acting in response to public opinion. The Democrats as well as Republicans had strong connections to wealthy corporations. Kevin Phillips, a Republican analyst of national politics, wrote in 1990 that the Democratic Party was ‘history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party.’”

American elites in Congress began, in the 1970s, to work against the interests of the common person. In attacking welfare, Democratic politicians also began to act in opposition to the platform their party had won power on 40 years earlier. These policies hurt the working class but protected elite interests. By moving to enthusiastically support the system, Democrats made themselves allies of the elite, not the working man, and eliminated any remaining distinction between the two parties. 

“As the United States entered the nineties, the political system, whether Democrats or Republicans were in power, remained in the control of those who had great wealth. The main instruments of information were also dominated by corporate wealth.”

The activism of the 1960s and 1970s had seemed so promising. However, by the 1990s American elites had retrenched their position. Political cartelization reduced the choices of Americans to one elite-driven policy. And new technologies allowed elites to spread propaganda in ways unthinkable a century before. In many ways, elite control was more solid in the 1990s than in the wake of World War I.

“There is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the guards. We have known for some time that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn’t care about them, and about which they could do little. Now alienation has spread upwards above the poverty line. These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government—combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left.”

The guards Zinn refers to are those white middle-class Americans who he feels are primed for activism. This passage alludes to his discussion of the Attica prison revolt when the distinction between guards and prisoners briefly disappeared. Ultimately, lower-class activism cannot exist in a vacuum, and it cannot exist on its own. It needs to be unified, both with other lower-class activists and with sympathetic middle- and upper-class groups. In the 1990s, America seemed primed for this kind of unification as the middle classes grew dissatisfied with the status quo and began to contemplate rebellion against elite interests. This was a tremendous period of opportunity for the working class, but Zinn was unable from his contemporary vantage point to envision the outcome of these struggles.