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.

A December 1773 advertisement for a Sons of Liberty meeting. History textbooks often gloss over — or ignore completely — the massive community organizing effort that underlay the armed rebellion against the British.

In conjunction with my book, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, I reviewed 22 elementary, middle school, and high school texts. Fourteen were displayed at a National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) convention that I attended, while eight are approved for use in California, which has among the strictest criteria in the nation. I compared the 13 mythologies of the American Revolution discussed in my book with those perpetuated in these texts, and the results are startling. Although some texts fare better than others, all contain some serious lapses.

A Declaration of Independence twenty-one months before July 4, 1776. Click image to learn more and see larger picture.

. . . In 1997, Pauline Maier published American Scripture, where she uncovered 90 state and local “declarations of independence” that preceded the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The consequence of this historical tidbit is profound: Jefferson was not a lonely genius conjuring his notions from the ether; he was part of a nationwide political upheaval. Again, textbook writers have watered down the legend while missing the main point. Many now state that Jefferson was part of a five-man congressional committee, but they include no word of those 90 documents produced in less-famous chambers.

Some say these myths are harmless — what damage can stories do? Plenty. They change our view of historical and political processes. Myths that celebrate individual achievement mask fundamental truths of great importance. The United States was founded not by isolated acts of heroism but by the concerted revolutionary activities of people who had learned the power of collaborative effort. “Government has now devolved upon the people,” wrote one disgruntled Tory in 1774, “and they seem to be for using it.” That’s the story the myths conceal.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2004/05 issue of Rethinking Schools magazine. For more critical reviews of textbooks, visit Rethinking Schools.

Related Resources

Ray Raphael’s website with articles, interviews, a quiz, a detailed critique of commonly used textbooks, and more.

The post Re-examining the Revolution appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The director of AICL, Debbie Reese, provides up-to-date reviews and articles on the portrayal of American Indians in children’s and young adult literature and pop culture.

On the site you can find lists of the top ten books for elementary, middle, and high schools. This is a vital and educational site for anyone starting a collection or looking for quality children’s literature on American Indians.

Related Resource

A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children
Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin. 2006. 463 pages.
A compilation of work by Native parents, children, educators, poets and writers, A Broken Flute contains, from a Native perspective, “living stories,” essays, poetry, and hundreds of reviews of children’s books about Indians. It’s an indispensable volume for anyone interested in presenting honest materials by and about indigenous peoples to children.

The post American Indians in Children’s Literature appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

World War II, like so many other events in history, presents the teacher with an overwhelming range of topics. The rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe, the Holocaust, the military history and diplomacy of the war, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific, the Nuremberg Trials, the dropping of atomic bombs, the beginnings of the Cold War — there is no way to cover all these events in a typical month-long unit.

One event that invariably gets neglected is the war-time internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States. The reasons are numerous. But I suspect the main reason is that serious investigation of the internment would contradict the traditional presentation of the U.S. role in the war — how U.S. ingenuity and power turned back Hitler, liberated the concentration camps, halted Japanese expansionism, and generally fought the good fight. Such an interpretation does not leave much room for aberrations, particularly one as anti-democratic as the Japanese internment.

More resources on the incarceration (internment) of Japanese Americans during WWII.

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice (Volume 2). For more lessons like “A Lesson on the Japanese American Internment,” order Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice (Volume 2) with a rich collection of from-the-classroom articles, curriculum ideas, lesson plans, poetry, and resources. See Table of Contents.

The post A Lesson on the Japanese American Internment appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

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”).

The post Testing, Tracking, and Toeing the Line: A Role Play on the Origins of the Modern High School appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Most books leave out the story of the 381-day bus boycott involving thousands of people.

Issues of racism and direct confrontation between African American and European American people in the United States are usually considered too sensitive to be dealt with directly in the elementary school classroom. When African Americans and European Americans are involved in confrontation in children’s texts, the situation is routinely described as a problem between individuals that can be worked out on a personal basis. In the few cases where racism is addressed as a social problem, there has to be a happy ending.

Most books show Rosa Parks on her own and leave out her role with the NAACP and her trips to the Highlander Center. (Pictured here with freedom school educator Septima Clark.)

This is most readily apparent in the biographical treatment of Rosa Parks, one of the two names that most children associate with the Civil Rights Movement, the other being Martin Luther King Jr. The image of “Rosa Parks the Tired” exists on the level of a national cultural icon. Dozens of children’s books and textbooks present the same version of what might be called “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was one of the main organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Parks was a poor seamstress. She lived in Montgomery, Ala., during the 1950s. In those days there was still segregation in parts of the United States. That meant that African Americans and European Americans were not allowed to use the same public facilities such as restaurants or swimming pools. It also meant that whenever the city buses were crowded, African Americans had to give up seats in front to European Americans and move to the back of the bus. 

One day on her way home from work Rosa was tired and sat down in the front of the bus. As the bus got crowded she was asked to give up her seat to a European American man, and she refused. The bus driver told her she had to go to the back of the bus, and she still refused to move. It was a hot day, she was tired and angry, and she became very stubborn.

The driver called a policeman, who arrested  Rosa. When other African Americans in Montgomery heard this, they became angry too, so they decided to refuse to ride the buses until everyone was allowed to ride together. They boycotted the buses. The boycott, which was led by Martin Luther King Jr., succeeded. Now African Americans and European Americans can ride the buses together in Montgomery. Rosa Parks was a very brave person.

This story seems innocent enough. Rosa Parks is treated with respect, and the African American community is given credit for running the boycott and winning the struggle. On closer examination, however, this version reveals some distressing characteristics that serve to turn a carefully planned movement for social change into a spontaneous outburst based upon frustration and anger.

The following annotations on the previous summary suggest that we need a new story, one not only more in line with the truth but one that shows the organizational skills and determination of the African American community in Montgomery and the role of the bus boycott in the larger struggle to desegregate Montgomery and the South.

Click “Download Lesson” to continue reading article with myths and facts.

Why is this important?

One of the few children’s books that places Rosa Parks in the context of an organized movement.

When the story of the Montgomery bus boycott is told merely as a tale of a single heroic person, it leaves children hanging. Not everyone is a hero or heroine. Of course, the idea that only special people can create change is useful if you want to prevent mass movements and keep change from happening. Not every child can be a Rosa Parks, but everyone can imagine herself or himself as a participant in the boycott. As a tale of a social movement and a community effort to overthrow injustice, the Rosa Parks story opens the possibility of every child identifying herself or himself as an activist, as someone who can help make justice happen.

By Herbert Kohl, the author of more than forty books, including the bestselling classic 36 Children. A recipient of the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Herb Kohl was founder and first director of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City and established the PEN West Center in San Francisco, where he lives.

The post The Politics of Children’s Literature: What’s Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The post Daughter of Earth: Reading, Writing, and Social Class appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Aided by a popular and progressive young teacher, Sal Castro, Paula Crisostomo and a group of young Chicano activists battle parents, teachers, bureaucrats, the police and public opinion to make their point. Along the way, the students learn profound lessons about embracing their own identity and standing up for what they believe in. [Producer’s description.]

Promo Video

Walkout promo from Julian Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Historic Background from Democracy Now! (March, 26 2006):

The mass student walkouts this week across California and other states are not the first of their kind. In 1968, Chicano students in East Los Angeles staged a historic walkout in their high schools to protest academic prejudice and dire school conditions.

Students were forbidden from speaking Spanish in class or from using the restrooms during lunchtime. Schools taught a curriculum that largely ignored or denied Mexican-American history and Chicano students were steered toward menial labor and away from college by counselors and school officials.

In March 1968, the students decided to take a stand against the injustice and staged walkouts in schools across L.A. Many date the modern Chicano movement to the walkouts when some 20,000 teenagers took to the streets

Many of the students who participated in the walkouts went on to successful careers in politics, academia and the arts. One of them was Antonio Villaraigosa — he became the mayor of Los Angeles. Another was award-winning filmmaker Moctesuma Esparza, who was indicted for his role in organizing the walkouts. He is now executive producer of the HBO film about the 1968 protests simply titled Walkout.

Directed by Edward James Olmos and Robert M. Young | HBO

This film is currently available to watch on HBO Max and can also be purchased or rented from YouTube.

The post Walkout appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

By not providing students with the tools to understand the historical continuities and changes in schools, we may be reinforcing beliefs that so-called student failure is rooted in individual students, families, and teachers — not in a legacy of structural and educational injustice. As I hear students’ anger about not learning this history until college, I also think about the millions of students who are not able to attend college and may never learn this history.

This lesson was published by Rethinking Schools in an edition of Rethinking Schools magazine, “The Laptops Are Coming! The Laptops Are Coming!” (Summer 2008). For more articles and lessons like “Pump Up the Blowouts: Reflections on the 40th Anniversary of the Chicano/a School Blowouts,” order Rethinking Schools magazine, “The Laptops Are Coming!”

See Table of Contents.

Carlos Muñoz, Jr. (Painting and bio by Robert Shetterly from Americans Who Tell the Truth.) Carlos Muñoz, Jr. was one of 13 civil rights activists who were indicted for “conspiracy” for their role in the organizing of non-violent student protest against racial/ethnic educational inequality in the barrio schools of East Los Angeles in 1968. They each faced 66 years in prison. It took two years for the high courts of California to decide they were innocent by virtue of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; freedom of speech. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (1989, revised 2007). Muñoz played a prominent leadership role as one of the founders of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Read more.

The post Pump Up the Blowouts: Reflections on the 40th Anniversary of the Chicano/a School Blowouts appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Because interactive computer games like The Oregon Trail are encyclopedic in the amount of information they offer, and because they allow students a seemingly endless number of choices, they may appear educationally progressive.

But like the walls of a maze, the choices built into interactive computer games also channel participants in very definite directions. They are programmed by people — people with particular cultural biases — and children who play the computer games encounter the biases of the programmers (Bowers, 1988).

Just as we would not invite a stranger into our classrooms and then leave the room, teachers need to become aware of the political perspectives of computer simulations, and need to equip our students to “read” them critically.

Originally published in Rethinking Schools Volume 10, No.1 – Fall 1995.

Related Critiques

I started my history teaching career in the early 2000s. When I first taught about the “pioneer trails” (as the textbook called them), students would always bring up the computer game Oregon Trail. Here’s what I learned then and how I use it today as a teacher educator. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/sdyVJfEkDI

— Christopher Martell (@chriscmartell) June 1, 2023

The post On the Road to Cultural Bias: A Critique of The Oregon Trail appeared first on Zinn Education Project.