TAVIS SMILEY, host: From NPR in Los Angeles, I’m Tavis Smiley.
Happy Thanksgiving.
On today’s program, part one of a special report on the political and economic status
of indigenous people in the US and around the world.
Our regular commentator Michael Eric Dyson offers a few thoughts on Thanksgiving.
And we’ll hear how music created by the husband and wife duo Kindred the Family Soul
has become more than a family affair.
But first, the Thanksgiving holidays are a time when Americans traditionally take the
time to reflect on our nation’s history, to ponder how far we’ve come and the distance
we have yet to go.
But too often, we only scratch the surface of yesterday.
One academic who’s measure the past in arguably broader terms than depicted in many American
textbooks is Howard Zinn, historian, social activist, playwright and author of the critically
acclaimed “A People’s History of the United States.”
Zinn’s name has come up in the context of everything from the 1997 Academy Award-winning
film “Good Will Hunting” to “Who’s Who in America.”
Here today to help broaden our historical perspective is Howard Zinn, who joins us from
Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Professor, nice to have you on.
Professor HOWARD ZINN (Author, “A People’s History of the United States”): Oh, thank
you very much.
SMILEY: Professor Zinn, and both your writings and actions, you have long championed economically
and politically dispossessed people in this country and abroad.
You’ve also been openly critical of the kind of history we are taught and suggest
that there is a miseducation of sorts that makes its way into American cultural consciousness.
You maintain that key events are omitted it and what could be described as establishment
American history, while others are given more focus.
With that said, before we get into some specific examples of historical omissions, I think
it might be helpful then to address the very idea of history.
That is to say “History” with a capital H. I guess what I’m getting at is whose
history is it, and is that an important question, first of all, to even be asking?
Prof. ZINN: Well, that is the most important question anyone can ask about history, because
if you don’t asked that question, if you don’t ask, you know, who does the history
what’s behind it, what’s the point of you behind history, then you’re innocent
and then you’re subject to whatever history is given to you.
Then you’re given a big fat history text and you say, “Well, this is so big it must
include everything,” and you don’t question anything.
Probably the most important thing anyone can learn when they’re just beginning to think
about history is that history is very subjective.
History is always opinionated.
It’s never objective.
It’s never neutral, because when you think about it, all of history that’s presented
to you is a selection made by the historian out of an enormous amount of data.
The historian decides for you what is important and put that down in history about.
And what do you story and thinks is important may not be important to you.
And when I read the history books, even in graduate school, and listen to my teachers,
I found that so much of what I thought was important was missing from these books and
missing from these lectures.
And I felt that the American people, particularly young generation going to school, were getting
a very in adequate education about the American past.
SMILEY: Let me talk about the American past and some of those omissions that you’ve
talked about and written about specifically.
Our time is limited.
Let’s first talk about the omissions relative to Native Americans.
Can you first give us a snapshot of how these indigenous people of this part of the world
have been portrayed historically?
Prof. ZINN: Well, first of all, the treatment of our history with Indians, with the indigenous
population, is a very weak, in adequate treatment.
I remember going to school and, you know, I would learn about the Indians who came to
Thanksgiving dinner gratefully, and I would learn about Custer’s last stand, you know,
I would learn about Sitting Bull.
There are a few moments in American history we learn about.
But we didn’t learn about was the fact that the American colonist came in from the beginning
were invading Indian soil and driving driving the Indians out of their land and committing
massacres in order to persuade the Indians that that they had better move.
And the history of the United States is a history of hundreds of little wars fought
against the Indians, annihilating them, pushing them farther and farther and farther into
smaller and smaller piece of the country and finally in the late 19th century, sort of
taking the Indians that were left in squeezing them onto reservations and controlling them.
I mean, this is the history that is not told in most American textbooks.
The story that’s not told is the deceptions that were played on the Indians, the treaties
that were made with them in the treaties broken by the American government.
It’s important to know that because if you know that, then you will become aware that
the American government can lie, it can deceive people, he can do it not only relation to
Native Americans, it can do it in relation to all of us.
SMILEY: If I can refer to those as three of the big omissions, let me move from Native
Americans to the second of these big omissions, that being the history of African Americans
in this country.
Is the history of black folk in America adequately told, even today?
Prof. ZINN: Not even today.
Not even half of the civil rights movement.
And we’ve had some improvement.
You know, we have black history and we have African-American study programs, and so there
is been an improvement in the study of black history.
But it still adequate in that the point of view of black people are still very poorly
portrayed.
When you look at history from the standpoint of African-Americans, everything really looks
different.
Our heroes are different.
Andrew Jackson, who is often looked upon as some sort of democratic hero in our textbooks—
no, he was a slave owner.
Abraham Lincoln, yes, kind man, but he didn’t really move for emancipation onto it was pushed
by the anti-slavery movement, by the black and white abolitionist.
You know, we talk about the Progressive Era in American history in the early part of the
20th century, and we call it the Progressive Era even though that’s the time in which
more black people were lynched in this country, thousands of them, than any other period in
American history.
So the things that have happened in relationship to black people, and what they have suffered
in this country— I mean, not just under slavery but after slavery, you know, that’s
been neglected.
And one very important thing— what’s been neglected is the fact that the national government
was always collaborating with the South for maintaining racial segregation.
Even after the 14th and 15th amendments were added to the constitution, the national government,
every single president for almost one hundred years from the end of the Civil War to the
1960s, every single president ignored the 14th and 15th amendment allowed to South to
do what it wanted to black people.
That’s the story that has been very much omitted from our history books.
SMILEY: Big omission number three, at least for the purposes of our conversation today,
the labor movements.
Talk to me about how the labor movement are given short shrift in history books, even
today.
Prof. ZINN: Well, when I was going to school, I remember that— and I don’t even think
it changed very much— and that is the economic development of the United States was presented
and it sort of is a great triumphal march, a wonderful thing.
The United States after the Civil War becomes a leading economic power in the world.
And we’re taught about the great industrials, about the railroad magnets in about Rockefeller
and Carnegie and Harriman and Hill.
But what is what is left out about the story is the working people.
When I studied history in school, even up to the graduate level, I did not learn about
the immigrants who worked on the transcontinental railroad, the Irish and Chinese immigrants
who worked on that railroad and died in great numbers, long hours, sickness, overwork.
I did not learn about the girls who worked in Lowell textile mills, and went into the
job at the age of 12, died at the age of 25.
I did not learn about the people who work in Rockefeller’s oil refineries when is
coal mines, or Andrew Carnegie steel mill.
I didn’t hear about the history of the labor struggle in this country.
Didn’t hear about the Lawrence textile strike of 1912 or the Colorado coal strike of 1913,
‘14.
It’s very important for people to learn about the history of labor struggle because
otherwise they would think that whatever gains working people have made, you know, like the
eight-hour workday, they would think it came from Congress or the president.
No, whatever gains working people have made in this country have come from their own efforts,
from the struggles, from their strikes, from the boycotts, their facing off the police
in the National Guard.
It’s a very important lesson for people because it’s not a lesson just for labor
movements, it’s a lesson for all of us.
It xxxx tells us if we are going to achieve any justice in this country, we are not going
to get it from the initiative of the government.
We are going to get it because citizens organize, get together and they agitate and they demonstrate.
This is what they did in the Civil Rights movement, in the movement against the war
in Vietnam and the women’s movement, the Native American movement.
Citizens got together, they organize, they protest, they commit civil disobedience, they
create a new atmosphere in the country and then something changes.
That’s the most important thing people could learn from history of this country.
SMILEY: Never enough time to talk about history, obviously, but let me ask you this is an excellent
question, professors in and all is said and done, what would you recommend people do old
and young, want to come to the question, the notion, I’m studying history?
Can people approach this first on an individual level, and also on an institutional level?
Prof. ZINN: Well, I think on an institutional level, people ought to examine courses that
are given at in their institution, at college, and see to it and ask for courses in labor
history, courses and women’s history, courses in African-American, Native American history.
They see to it that people who represent these various groups are added to the faculties
of the institutions.
On a personal level, I think it is very important for people to go outside the classroom and
outside the curriculum, to go to the library.
The library is the best sorts of independent information, and there they will find materials
that don’t come up in their classrooms.
There they will find a new kind of history.
That’s what young people can do today if they want to really educate themselves about
history.
SMILEY: All right so I lied.
One other exit question right quick.
Revisionist history— what do you say to those who might argue that someone like Howard
Zinn simply throwing a wrench into solid American history with this particular brand of scholarship,
that he’s really trying to rewrite history to reflect a liberal agenda?
Prof. ZINN: There absolutely right.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Prof. ZINN: We’re trying to rewrite history to reflect the point of you of those people
who have been left out, because the kind of history we’ve had so far has been history
from the top, history written from the point of view of politicians and generals and militarists
and industrialist.
And yes, I want to change that history so that people can get an idea of what ordinary
people have suffered and what ordinary people have done to change their lives.
SMILEY: Social activist, historian, playwright Howard Zinn is a professor emeritus of political
science at Boston University and author of a People’s history of the article states
professor is in, thank you so much for joining us.
It’s been a pleasure sir.