Howard Zinn - Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations about a People’s History

TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN

TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN

Conversations About

A Peoples History

HOWARD ZINN

WITH RAY SUAREZ

CONTENTS

by Ray Suarez

When we organize with one another, when

we get involved, when we stand up and

speak out together, we can create a power no

government can suppress.

Howard Zinn

This book is based on the transcripts of conversations between Howard Zinn and Ray Suarez that took place in 2007.

FOREWORD

In 2007, the phone on my desk at the PBS NewsHour, where I was a senior correspondent, rang as I was preparing for that nights broadcast. On the other end of the line was Al Perlmutter, documentary filmmaker, with an intriguing offer. He was contemplating a documentary on the life and work of Howard Zinn and needed someone to interview him. Was I interested?

How could I not be interested? In the endless tugs-of-war over what constitutes American history, the truth of what happened, and what we might conclude about this countrys place in the world, Zinn had grabbed one end of the rope, and a lot of attention, for decades. His work was bracing, challenging, meant to force the reader into a new encounter with received ideas about the United States.

Now, near the end of his long career and, as it would turn out, of his long life, I would get a chance to pick the brain of my Brooklyn landsman. I asked Perlmutter about the time commitment. His plan was for us to talk for six hours over the course of two days. Six hours? For a daily deadline broadcaster, a ten-minute interview is long. For my books I might talk with a source for an hour, or if the conversation is crackling, energetic, unexpectedly fruitful an hour and a half, tops. Could we sustain such long conversations without limping to the end like Depression-era marathon dancers trying to win a couple of bucks?

That was the last thing I needed to worry about.

Long, lean, crowned by a lions mane of silver hair, Zinn bubbled over with ideas. In an austere old factory building in Queens, New York, we talked about the way Americans learn their history and why we learn what we do. We talked about the uses of history in creating a coherent narrative, and how people create meaning even around stories that are incomplete or untrue. My concerns about the project were laid to rest almost immediately, in the first minutes of conversation, after we began talking about one of the great exemplars of the historical flesh-and-blood figure encrusted over time with our need for heroesChristopher Columbus.

I asked about the stories weve told each other over time about the Italian marinerturnedSpanish colonial governor, and what the risks are in rewriting myths and reexamining heroes. Zinns simple reply: To break into this is to be a troublemaker.

Troublemaker is a role Zinn didnt shy away from. It is significantand a sign of his own dogged, plainspoken approachthat in the years since the publication of A Peoples History of the United States in 1980, the text has moved from the fringes of the American conversation much closer to the center. Other troublemakers were of course also breaking into the American story women, African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, sexual minorities, and so on. Time, arguments, and an increased willingness to debate, not only the plain facts of our national story but also what they mean, were moving the needle, leaving us, in Zinns own words, ready to rethink long-held ideas.

In the nearly forty years since the first edition of A Peoples History appeared, Zinns critics have tried to sandbag him. Some complain that his iconoclasm, his tearing down of long-revered heroes, and his corrections to the record leave only a dreary slog through centuries of oppression, struggle, and suffering. Well, a historians job is to find out what actually happened. The horrors are there all right, and Zinn is clear-eyed and persistent in forcing us to look at them.

Economic exploitation is never far from Zinns mind as he recounts the history of the robber barons of the nineteenth century, the poor and working-class men of the South who took up arms for the Confederacy, the girls of the mill towns in Massachusetts who walked away from their machines to fight for better pay, the farmers driven to revolt by ruinous taxes on land. They all are characters in Zinns American drama. Moving economics closer to the center of American history is more common today. In 1980, the lives and struggles of ordinary people had to muscle their way into the story to take up a place alongside generals on horseback, stirring words of historical documents, and Manifest Destiny.

However, in A Peoples History and later in A YoungPeoples History of the United States, as well as throughout the book you hold in your hands, right there along with the struggle and suffering is Zinns idealism, embodied in a tableau vivant of new heroes along with the new perspectives. The historian wants to shatter your old notions about U.S. history. In the very same moment, he wants to remind you of the power of common people to challenge authority, improve their own circumstances, and change their country for the better.

The historian, the World War II veteran, the writer, the teacher is pulling on your sleeve again and again, saying, Wait. Theres more to this story. By filling out the picture, by shining a light on the dark corners, were not tearing down your country. Were telling a more complicated story. Were telling, as a result, a more interesting story. In short, were telling you the truth. In the interview youre about to read and throughout his published work, Zinn does not hesitate when it is required to tell a fuller truth about our countrys supposed heroes.

Pick up a typical U.S. history textbook and youll find celebrations of Theodore Roosevelt. Howard Zinn instead focuses on his bellicosity and racism. By contrast, during Martin Luther King Jr.s public life and after his assassination, his detractors sought to use the civil rights leaders personal foibles to undermine his moral authority. Zinn takes a different approach. Discussing Kings life, Zinn said, What all people have in common is flaws and contradictions. What they dont have in common is that some people are not admirable in their relationship to society. Some people are acquirers of wealth and makers of war. And other people are people like King, who struggle for justice and speak out against war. It is those differences that are crucial in assessing human beings.

It is a time of striking division in the United States, not only over history, but also over what this countrys role should be in the twenty-first century. Zinn is asking not only for a reckoning with the past, but for a reimagining of Americas future as a nation among nations.

For Zinn, an honest look at who we were leads to an honest look at who we are. My career as a reporter took me to every corner of this country and to much of the world, and by vocation and inclination Ive always believed that the complete picture is required. At the same time, I was a child of the Cold War, taught an idealized version of our history. Coming to A Peoples History as an adult, it was still a challenge to leave behind my belief in American exceptionalism. As Zinn said, We have to start thinking of America as one among many, as a nation of people equal to other peoples but not superior to them. What that would do, aside from being an enormous psychological change for Americans, would be to bring about an honest recognition of who we are and what our limitations are, without denigrating ourselves.