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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“The famous ‘Bread and Roses’ strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Mass. is the setting for this novel written for young adults. Rosa, an Italian immigrant lives in tenement housing with her baby brother, widowed mother and older sister who both work in the mills. While they join in solidarity, the labor strike, Rosa worries about their safety and how her family will survive with no income. Jake, a few years older than Rosa, works in the mill to support himself and his alcoholic father and cannot go to school. These two characters meet and offer two different perspectives of many issues including, labor unions, working conditions, child labor, education, and immigration. Once again Ms. Paterson has created characters kids can understand and identify with, using an historic setting that makes this a book ideal for both Language Arts and Social Studies.” —Amy Miller, 7th grade Language Arts Teacher

ISBN: 9780547076515 | Houghton Mifflin

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Complete with handouts and case-studies, this curriculum introduces students to key groups, events, and issues such as the Homestead Strike, the Union Maids, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, “scientific management,” and the impact of racism on labor.

“This is a workbook in the best sense. Its approach is original, exhilarating, and, most important, practical. That most neglected of all subjects in U.S. schools — the visions and lives of working people — is faced head-on in this book. A must for all people who earn their daily bread.” —Studs Terkel

“Most school teachers are drowned in paper, but here is one book I want to recommend to them. It is a way of getting American teenagers not just interested, but excited and passionate about their history — modern American labor history.” —Pete Seeger

“Everywhere I go I recommend this unique book. You want to learn more about labor history than just dates and famous people? Read and use this book. At long last, a book as exciting as labor’s struggle itself.” —Julia Reichert, filmmaker

“. . . one of the best social studies curricula ever produced.” —Fred Glass, California Federation of Teachers

ISBN: 9780853457534 | Monthly Review Press

The Power In Our Hands — Available for Download

Opening

• Acknowledgments, Notes to the Teacher, and Introduction

Unit I: Basic Understandings

• Organic Goodie Simulation
• Who Makes History?
• What Rights Do We Have?

Unit II: Changes in the Workplace/”Scientific Management”

• Paper Airplane Simulation
• Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing
• Modern Times
• “Taylorizing” Burgers: A Fantasy

Unit III: Defeats, Victories, Challenges

• The Homestead Strike
• Birth of a Rank-and-File Organizer
• Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike

Unit IV: Our Own Recent Past

• It’s a Mystery — White Workers Against Black Workers
• Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite?
• 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike
• Union Maids

Unit V: Continuing Struggle

• Shutdown! — Confronting Plant Closures
• Labor Songs

The post The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Democracy Now!’s War and Peace Report provides listeners with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S.corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts. In addition, Democracy Now! hosts real debates — debates between people who substantially disagree, such as between the White House or the Pentagon spokespeople on the one hand, and grassroots activists on the other.

The program provides background information for teachers and parents. In addition, segments of the program could be used in middle and high school classrooms.

Available in Spanish.

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Click for more resources for teaching about the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912.

This activity embodies a couple of key insights of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. One is that history is not inevitable. People’s choices matter. Through role play, students in this lesson explore some of the actual dilemmas faced by strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. Here, the teaching methodology is designed to match the history itself, as students portray Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.)  organizers deciding how — and for what — to conduct a massive strike. The other is that social class matters. Too often, traditional textbooks and curricula neglect the way social class has shaped our country’s history and how people’s understanding of class has influenced their actions.

Social class is at the heart of this lesson, as it is at the heart of so much of Howard Zinn’s work. This activity — co-authored with Norm Diamond and included originally in the book The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States — highlights how unions can have different goals and structures than the ones that predominate today.

One Big Union, by Josh MacPhee. Source: Justseeds

In “Lawrence, 1912,” students contrast the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. Students act as, and empathize with, union organizers. The role play illustrates, well, the power in our hands — one of the first major victories for U.S. labor, and an inspirational instance of worker solidarity. This lesson broadens students’ sense of what workers can and do fight for beyond wages and benefits.

This is one of the 16 lessons available from The Power In Our Hands.

Classroom Stories

This week’s @ZinnEdProject activity is about the 1912 and Strike. One of my students imagined himself as a recent Polish immigrant and wrote his internal monologue in Polish!! @SAC_PR students are the best pic.twitter.com/HuRvDM6fLJ

— Amelia E Serafine (@AmeliaESerafine) February 14, 2019

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“El profesor Zinn escribe con un entusiasmo que raras veces se encuentra en la sombría prosa de la historia académica. Su texto está adornado con citas de líderes laborales, gente opuesta a la guerra y esclavos fugitivos. Es una descripción vívida de acontecimientos usualmente ignorados. Es una inversión de perspectivas, una baraja de héroes y villanos.” — The New York Times Book Review

La obra de Howard Zinn ha inspirado a estudiantes y activistas de todas las edades, afirmando que la gente tiene el poder de cambiar la historia. En La otra historia de los Estados Unidos, la version definitiva en español del clásico de Zinn La historia del pueblo de los Estados Unidos, Zinn asume la narrativa típica de la historia americana y nos muestra la mentira que se esconde detrás de la historia “oficial” — revelando a Cristóbal Colón no como descubridor sino como asesino; los fundadores de la nación norteamericana no como liberadores sino como la fundación de una nueva elite adinerada — y a la vez aboga por héroes americanos alternativos, desde Bartolomeo de las Casas hasta Tecumseh y César Chávez, quienes desafiaron el poder norteamericano imperialista y vencieron.

Actualizado y ampliado incluyendo la presidencia de Bush, La otra historia de los Estados Unidos nos vuelve a recordar que la grandeza verdadera de America se encuentra no en los generales militares, sino en sus voces disidentes.

ISBN:  9781609803513 | Seven Stories Press

More resources for teaching people’s history in Spanish.

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Viva La Causa

The kit includes a 39-minute film on DVD and a 56-page teacher’s guide. Viva La Causa was produced for grades 7-12. [Producer’s description.]

Teachers can order this kit for free or download the free teachers guide.

Produced by Teaching Tolerance.

Watch Online

VIVA LA CAUSA from Profe Zawil on Vimeo.

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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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