The film provides great background information for teachers on the life and activism of Howard Zinn in the civil rights, anti-war, and free speech movements. Clips could be used in the classroom to introduce specific historic events.

Narrated by Matt Damon with music by Pearl Jam, Woody Guthrie & Billy Bragg. Closed captioned.

Produced by First Run Features.

“With narration taken entirely from Zinn’s own writing, read by actor Matt Damon, filmmakers Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller skillfully capture the spirit of Zinn’s life work.” — Link TV

“Thoughtful, exciting, moving.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Finally, a documentary about one of America’s most important academics.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Trailer

Watch the full documentary online.

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Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People’s History tells U.S. history from the point of view of — and in the words of — America’s women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.

As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country’s greatest battles — the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women’s rights, racial equality — were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus’s arrival through President Clinton’s first term, A People’s History of the United States features insightful analysis of the most important events in U.S. history.

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those. . . whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.” Packed with vivid details and telling quotations, Zinn’s award-winning classic continues to revolutionize the way U.S. history is taught and remembered.

The book has appeared in popular media, like The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Good Will Hunting, Lady Bird, and the History Channel documentary The People Speak. [Publisher’s description.]

More than two million copies sold.

The 35th anniversary edition, published in November of 2015, includes a new introduction by Anthony Arnove. He begins,

Howard Zinn fundamentally changed the way millions of people think about history with A People’s History of the United States. He would be the first to say, however, that he didn’t do so alone. The book grew out of his awareness of the importance of social movements throughout U.S. history, some of which he played an active role in during the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, namely the Civil Rights Movement, mass mobilizations to end the Vietnam War, as well as other antiwar movements, and the many movements for higher wages and workers’ rights and the rights of women, Latinos, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, and others.

ISBN: 9780062397348 | HarperCollins

Teacher Quotes

As a teacher, the Zinn Education Project website is invaluable because it provides activities that directly relate to A People’s History. Last week we did The People vs. Columbus, et al. which places all the parties involved in the arrival of Columbus on trial for the murder of the Tainos. The activity was so interactive that teachers from other classrooms had to ask us to quiet down. Students were able to better understand the motives and consequences behind the arrival.

Even though A People’s History can be a bit difficult for some students, the activities on the Zinn Education Project website makes the content accessible regardless of their reading level.

—Julian Hipkins III

HIgh School Administrator, Washington, District of Columbia

My first lesson as a student teacher was using an excerpt from A People’s History of the United States to teach about Columbus. I was working at Booker T. Washington Middle School in NYC. A student raised her hand and said, “Howard Zinn is my uncle!” I was honored, my hero’s niece! For Christmas, I got a signed copy!

—Francesca Miller

Teacher, New York, New York

More than thirty years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Howard Zinn on a cross-country flight to check out graduate programs. Despite my being somewhat star-struck, he was one of those easy to “fall into conversation with” seatmates — kind, engaging, and interested in why I was traveling.

When I revealed that I was considering becoming a social studies teacher, he said “You must do that. The world needs teachers like the one you will be.” The voice of the universe had spoken and I have been a classroom teacher for the past thirty years, using parts of A People’s History of the United States and his inspirational approach to understanding the American experience.

—Annie Barnes

High School Humanities Teacher, Los Angeles, California

I grew up very trusting (too trusting) of the mainstream media and the accounts of our nations history from my textbooks. For years I was under the impression that the United States of America was the greatest nation in the world with no flaws — the epitome of democratic perfection. I would sing the national anthem proudly at baseball games and digest all the stories of our founding fathers that led me to idolization.

Then I read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and everything changed. I became more curious about who was writing the history and their motivations. I developed a lens by which to critically judge the events and accounts I read in newspapers and history books. I was more thoughtful about a mainstream version of our history informed how another might see the world differently than me.

His book was the catalyst — opening me to a deeper understanding of myself, my biases and how they manifested subconsciously into sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of intolerance. After doing more work, reading books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I found my way with conviction into activism. Each day I do this work I feel increasingly more empowered to be an aware and mindful ally to the Movement for Black Lives and other movements who struggle to dismantle systems of violence and oppression.

—Brendan Orsinger

Organizer with the James Reeb Voting Rights Project, District of Columbia

I read A People’s History of the United States in the summer before my junior year of high school — fifteen years ago now. It was an interesting time. This would have been 2005-2006, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were well underway, and I was beginning to pay attention to what those around me were saying about war.

As I sat in Boston Common reading my paperback copy of A People’s History, I must have had dozens of people come up to me to tell me how much it had changed their lives. Some were former students, some were fans, some were college students reading Zinn for the first time. Howard Zinn gave me a gift — a radical awakening. His work has that kind of power. You don’t forget injustice easily, and he unearths the injustices the other textbooks would rather forget.

I had the distinct honor of meeting Zinn when he gave the opening remarks at an adaptation of Grace Paley’s work. For all that Zinn was — activist, educator, historian, pacifist, mensch — he reminded me of why our people fight for justice. I love the long, anti-capitalist, anti-white supremacist tradition he carried forward as a Jew. We are obligated by our religion to fight for all who are oppressed, and every time I read Zinn, I am graced with that reminder, and that memory.

I believe in the power of radical change through progressive education and fully support the work of the Zinn Education Project.

—Becky Eidelman

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Graduate Student, Boston, Massachusetts

I am an 8th grade Humanities teacher at Melrose Leadership Academy in Oakland.

I just finished chapter 4 of A People’s History of the United States on tyranny with my 8th graders, and I have never seen so many of my students engaged in discussion! One of my normally non-avid readers came up to me at the end of the class and said, “Ms. V, this is such an interesting book!”

I am so proud to be using Howard Zinn’s work! Thank you!

—Marisa Villegas

Middle School Humanities Teacher, Oakland, California

Because of this book, I understood early in my college career the importance of the true, unfiltered words of the actual actors in a historical event. As a result, I was drawn further into the study of history and, eventually, into my career as a history teacher. What A People’s History brought to my attention is that American history is much more interesting than that. Our history is an exciting, sometimes appalling, struggle for power and that makes us just like every other country that has ever existed.

A long list of “good guys” with no one to struggle with is neither a true story nor a good story. It doesn’t resonate because it leads the student to believe that we are all waiting for the next exceptional leader, instead of becoming a force for change in our own communities. A People’s History helped me recognize this as a student of history and inspires my attempt to bring true stories to young people, weary of the inaccessible lists that history teaching has become.

—Reynolds Bodenhamer

HIgh School Social Studies Teacher, Gulfport, Mississippi

In my first year of teaching 15 years ago, I was browsing local bookstores for resources that could supplement the textbook that I resented. I became a history teacher to help students make history a living part of their lives and the textbook seemed to have the opposite effect. I grabbed A People’s History of the United States and have yet to put it down.

The way in which Howard Zinn makes history compelling for students is undeniable and a resource that I have decided I — and my students — cannot be without. Many students who find themselves in alternative programs will often say that teachers never made school interesting. Zinn’s work gave me the resource I needed to capture the internal sense of justice so many urban students have. As an educator, I am filled with excitement that although I opened the window with the help of Howard Zinn, they have made the effort to examine what is outside.

—Dawn Fontaine

High School Social Studies Teacher, Springfield, Massachusetts

I have been a Howard Zinn fan since I picked up a copy of A People’s History when it first came out. I have cited it in more newspaper opinion columns than I can remember. I also quoted from it many times in my lectures at West Kentucky Community and Technical College, where I was on the faculty for 36 years. I recommended the book to my students. I still recommend the book to my union brothers and sisters — I’m the webmaster-editor for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, a member of the state executive board and a retiree-member of AFT Local 1360. More than a few have bought copies of it.

—Berry Craig

Professor Emeritus of History, West Kentucky Community and Technical College, Louisville, Kentucky

Read more quotes from teachers about the impact of Howard Zinn and A People’s History of the United States on their work.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
Chapter 2. Drawing the Color Line
Chapter 3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
Chapter 4. Tyranny Is Tyranny
Chapter 5. A Kind of Revolution
Chapter 6. The Intimately Oppressed
Chapter 7. As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs
Chapter 8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God
Chapter 9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom
Chapter 10. The Other Civil War
Chapter 11. Robber Barons and Rebels
Chapter 12. The Empire and the People
Chapter 13. The Socialist Challenge
Chapter 14. War Is the Health of the State
Chapter 15. Self-help in Hard Times
Chapter 16. A Peoples War?
Chapter 17. Or Does It Explode?
Chapter 18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
Chapter 19. Surprises
Chapter 20. The Seventies: Under Control?
Chapter 21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
Chapter 22. The Unreported Resistance
Chapter 23. The Coming Revolt of the Guards
Chapter 24. The Clinton Presidency
Chapter 25. The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism”

The post A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Over the years I included in my curriculum at Portland, Oregon Franklin High School examples of resistance, set up simulations and activities where students challenged the system or took on the roles of change-makers. Still, I sent too many students into the world as cynical young adults when what I wanted was to empower students to become active citizens — thinking critically about society, identifying its problems and working toward solutions. I wanted to start this school year with one hopeful story we could return to repeatedly. I found it in Salt of the Earth, a compelling and dramatic film that demonstrates alliances, solidarity, and resistance.

Film is in public domain. View Salt of the Earth or download free online at Internet Archive.

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching For Equity and Justice (Volume 1). For more teaching activities like “Salt of the Earth: Grounds Students in Hope,” order Rethinking Our Classrooms with essays, teaching ideas, compelling classroom narratives, and hands-on examples.

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Soldiers take a psychological test (the exact type of examination is unclear) in Camp Lee in Virginia in November 1917, the year the United States entered World War I and Woodworth first developed his test. Source: National Archives

To explore some of the historical roots of the modern high school, I wrote a role play that I hoped would allow students to question aspects of schooling they often take for granted, such as tracking (“ability grouping”), standardized testing, guidance counseling, student government, the flag salute, bells, required courses with patriotic themes, and extracurricular activities like athletics and the school newspaper. These now commonplace components of high school life were introduced in the early years of the 20th century, a time of growing union militancy and radicalism, and large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe, accompanied by vastly increased high school enrollment.

Underlying the new reforms was a consensus among leading educators that social class stratification was here to stay, and that high schools should abandon a single academic curriculum for all students.

This lesson was originally published by Rethinking Schools in Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching For Equity and Justice (Volume 1).

Background Materials

• Paul Davis Chapman,  Schools as Sorters, New York University Press, 1988 (especially Chapter 5, “The Use of Intelligence Tests in Schools: California Case Studies”).
• David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, Harvard University Press, 1974.
• Joel Spring,  The American School, 1642-1985, Longman, 1986 (especially Chapter 7, “Education and Human Capital”).
• Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown, Harcourt, Brace, 1929 (especially part II: “Training the Young”).
• Jeannie Oakes,  Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, Yale University Press, 2005 (Chapter 2, “Unlocking the Tradition”).
• Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, Basic Books, 1976, (Chapters 5 and 6, “The Origins of Mass Public Education” and “Corporate Capital and Progressive Education”).

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Illustration of the draft riots in New York City. Source: New York Public Library.

As Howard Zinn describes in A People’s History of the United States, the most destructive period of civil violence in U.S. history occurred during four days of rioting in July 1863. Zinn writes, “The draft riots were complex — anti-black, anti-rich, anti-Republican.” This activity focuses especially on the conflict between recently arrived Irish immigrants and blacks.

One of the critical “habits of the mind” that students should develop throughout a U.S. history course is to respond to social phenomena with “why” questions. They should begin from a premise that events have explanations, that people don’t, for example, kill each other simply because they speak different languages, attend different churches, or have different skin colors.

This activity takes the outrages of the 1863 riots as its starting point, and asks students to piece together clues that help account for this sudden explosion of rage. It’s important to note that making explanations is different than making excuses. Here, we’re asking students to try to understand the horrors committed, not to rationalize them.

Note: It’s best to do this activity before students have read about the draft riots in chapter 10 of A People’s History of the United States, excerpted below.

. . . the Conscription Act of 1863 provided that the rich could avoid military service: they could pay $300 or buy a substitute. In the summer of 1863, a ‘Song of the Conscripts’ was circulated by the thousands in New York and other cities. One stanza:

We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more
We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore
Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree;
We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.

Depiction of rioters and police during the New York City draft riots of 1863. Harper’s Weekly, August 1, 1863. Source: Harper’s Weekly, Public domain

When recruiting for the army began in July 1863, a mob in New York wrecked the main recruiting station. Then, for three days, crowds of white workers marched through the city, destroying buildings, factories, streetcar lines, homes. The draft riots were complex — anti-black, anti-rich, anti-Republican. From an assault on draft headquarters, the rioters went on to attacks on wealthy homes, then to the murder of blacks. They marched through the streets, forcing factories to close, recruiting more members of the mob. They set the city’s colored orphan asylum on fire. They shot, burned, and hanged blacks they found in the streets. Many people were thrown into the rivers to drown. On the fourth day, Union troops returning from the Battle of Gettysburg came into the city and stopped the rioting. Perhaps four hundred people were killed. No exact figures have ever been given, but the number of lives lost was greater than in any other incident of domestic violence in American history.

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Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed, writes in the foreword,

I opened a notebook, flipped to the first page of A Different Mirror, and began. Many hours later, as the summer sun had begun setting behind a thicket of campus trees, I was still there. I couldn’t stop. An endless succession of paragraphs had been underlined, hundreds of pages had been dog-eared, and my notebook was full of revelations, observations, arrows, and exclamation points. It was as if I had been thirsty my entire life and had finally been given water to drink. Takaki’s book was providing me with the tools I didn’t know I needed; it gave me a new historical framework with which to understand the landscape of American life.

I had previously read books that outlined the histories of particular ethnic groups, but I had never encountered a book that put the experiences of so many different types of Americans in conversation with one another. Under Takaki’s guidance, I was able to trace the intellectual throughlines that shaped Jefferson’s conception of Black American inferiority and Roosevelt’s belief in Japanese American disloyalty. I was able to establish clearer connections between the ideas that forced Native Americans off their land and those that brought in Chinese immigrants to build railroads across it. I was able to more fully understand the parallels of Mexican immigrants who generations ago had arrived at the southern border of the United States, and Irish immigrants who generations ago had arrive in the ports of Boston and New York.

With that said, one of the great strengths of A Different Mirror is that it does not allow comparison to slip into conflation. Takaki is careful as he threads his needle through history. He wants readers to understand the connections and overlapping histories that exist across different groups of Americans, but he is careful not to suggest that those histories are the same. It is the historical nuance and cultural dexterity with which Takaki writes that allows readers to make their own connections throughout the text. . . . .

Today we find ourselves in a moment when teaching history fully and accurately is being misrepresented by many as an ideological project rather than an honest one. There are state legislatures attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very history that explains why our country looks the way that it does today. There are school boards banning books that provide students with perspectives from voices that are already on the peripheries of our country’s collective consciousness. It is more essential than ever that we have books that explain the history of this country in clear and forthright ways — books that don’t shirk from a certain part of history simply because some people might find it unsettling.

ISBN: 9780316499071 | Back Bay Books

A splendid achievement, a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history. The research is meticulous, the writing powerful and eloquent, with what can only be called an epic sweep across time and cultures. — Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

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Rebellion within the American colonies prior to the Revolutionary War is a topic seldom discussed in American history classes. Yet the fiery rhetoric of freedom and the brave actions of many colonists eventually defeated the military might of the most powerful nation in the Western world. Why, then, are we reluctant to introduce the stories of Americans who fought not only against the British Crown, but also against the aristocratic rule of the colonial elite? What is it that prevents us from presenting a balanced portrayal of early America in which the diverse voices of both the powerful and powerless are celebrated?

Perhaps part of the answer is that traditional history books and history classes pay little or no attention to either the contributions or the grievances of the indentured servants who journeyed to North America. Instead, these traditional treatments of history most often describe a harmonious melting pot of colonists who busily set about to create a classless, democratic new society. The reality is far less harmonious and democratic, but much more interesting and real. Indentured servants, who comprised almost fifty percent of all colonial immigrants, were among the hardest-working but poorest, most abused, and most disgruntled of all the colonists. The realities of their servitude fueled the fires of rebellion.

Reprinted from Teaching with Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press.

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In most of our history courses, students learn about brave patriots who prepared for the Revolutionary War by uniting against a tyrannical king and oppressive English laws. In this well-known story, all Americans united in opposition to England and looked to their enlightened leaders to help them in their valiant struggle for freedom. While there certainly is some truth to this version of the Revolutionary War, a more balanced interpretation includes another perspective — that of the many ordinary colonists who had grown increasingly disillusioned and angry with their unresponsive colonial leaders and did not want to engage in a war for independence designed to benefit the colonial elite.

Some of those unimportant discontented colonists turned to rebellion against their colonial governors. In Chapter 4 of A People’s History, Howard Zinn includes their perspective, weaving it carefully into the more traditional story and asking questions that must be answered before we can obtain a more accurate understanding of the years prior to the Revolution. The voices in this chapter give credence to the beliefs and behaviors of those imbued with the revolutionary spirit — a spirit full of anger directed at both the colonial elite and the British Crown.

Reprinted from Teaching with Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press.

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“A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” This much-quoted phrase seems as relevant today as it did during the Revolutionary War. The documents in “Half a Revolution” illustrate this fight and the way in which it was carried out during and immediately after the Revolutionary War. Independence, it seems, did not bring an end to the fighting between various “factions.” To Joseph Plumb Martin, the “poor soldiers” served their country well during the war, but afterward “they were turned adrift like old worn-out horses.” Samuel Dewees recalled that the soldiers at York “were afraid to say or to do any thing” for fear of punishment, and Dewees avoided encountering officers lest they might “construe my conduct in some way or other into an offense.” Henry Knox described the need of “men of reflection, and principle” to be protected “in their lawful pursuits” from “the violence of lawless men.” And James Madison worried about ways to control “the majority” who may be led by “the mischiefs of faction.”

These factions, and the way in which both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution dealt with them, resulted in “half a revolution.” Indeed, a revolution in its entirely would have required an end to class conflict by welcoming American Indians into North American society, outlawing slavery, and granting equal rights to American women — in other words, creating a new society characterized by economic, social, racial, and political equality.

Reprinted from Teaching with Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press.

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