History Matters

History Matters by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn delivers this speech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 6, 2004, arguing that history is useful because it lets people check the claims of those in authority rather than accepting whatever the White House or media repeats. He explains that history cannot give definitive answers about the present, but it can reveal persistent patterns that suggest probabilities. Zinn then explains that his approach differs from that of traditional professional historians, who tend to avoid contemporary political issues. He traces this to his own life: ten years passed between high school and college. Growing up in a working-class family in Brooklyn, son of a waiter who belonged to Waiters' Union Local 2, Zinn went to work at age eighteen in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an apprentice ship fitter, joining the International Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (IUMSWA), a CIO union. He then volunteered for the air force during World War II, serving as a bombardier flying combat missions over Europe. After the war he worked various jobs before using the GI Bill to attend college at twenty-seven and study history. These experiences gave him what he calls class consciousness, leading him to reject the idea that Americans all share the same "national interest," a term he likens to Kurt Vonnegut's "granfalloon." He describes American society as divided between the rich, the struggling poor, and an anxious middle class. Applying this lens to the Constitution, Zinn recounts Thurgood Marshall's dissent during the 1987 bicentennial, noting the Constitution legitimized slavery, counting slaves as three-fifths of a person and requiring the return of escaped slaves. He cites historian Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, which found the fifty-five framers in Philadelphia were largely slaveowners, bondholders, merchants, and land speculators pursuing their own economic interests rather than representing "we the people." He connects this to Shays' Rebellion of 1786, in which Massachusetts farmers, many Revolutionary War veterans led by Daniel Shays, rebelled against heavy taxation and foreclosures, surrounding courthouses in Springfield, Amherst, and Great Barrington until militia and later a state army suppressed them. Zinn notes that General Knox warned Washington about the rebellion, and argues the Constitution was designed partly to create a government strong enough to suppress such uprisings, slave revolts, and Indian resistance to westward expansion. Zinn extends this class analysis through American history, from Alexander Hamilton's early economic program to modern tax breaks, arguing legislation generally serves the interests of the powerful except during periods of popular upheaval. He cites the New Deal as an example, attributing its reforms less to Franklin Roosevelt's personal kindness than to the wave of general strikes in San Francisco and Minneapolis, textile strikes in the Carolinas, and tenant protests during the 1930s. Similarly, he says the eight-hour workday resulted from decades of labor struggle beginning with the 1886 strikes, not simply from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. He recalls that his formal education omitted the experiences of working people, such as the Chinese and Irish immigrants who died building the transcontinental railroad, the Lawrence textile strike of 1912, and the Ludlow massacre of 1914, prompting him to write history from workers' perspectives. Turning to war, Zinn reflects on his own service in what is considered the "good war," World War II, and the atrocities committed by his own side, including the deliberate bombing of German civilian populations in cities like Dresden and Hamburg, the firebombing of Tokyo in spring 1945 that killed roughly 100,000 people in one night, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He references the documentary The Fog of War and Robert McNamara's comments on war crimes, and Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Zinn concludes that war inevitably involves massive killing of innocents while its ultimate outcomes remain uncertain, noting that the world after World War II still contained dictatorship, poverty, and further wars. He applies this skepticism to the Vietnam War and the then-current Iraq War, questioning official justifications such as weapons of mass destruction and democracy-building, and citing past U.S.-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973 as reasons to doubt stated motives. Finally, Zinn describes his seven years, from 1956 to 1963, teaching at Spelman College, a Black women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, where he became involved in the civil rights movement alongside his students, traveling to Albany, Georgia, Selma, Alabama, and towns in Mississippi. He concludes that the federal government failed for nearly a century to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and that meaningful social change came only through citizens organizing, protesting, and risking arrest and violence, a lesson he says the labor movement had already learned: fundamental change depends on citizens' movements, not electoral politics alone.

By Howard Zinn · Genre: Political Essay, Historiography, Non-fiction Essay · 6,387 words

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Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 6, 2004.

In this speech, Zinn explores his reasons for teaching and writing about history.

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social-history · critical-historiography · activism · social-movements · american-history · alternative-narratives · popular-history · grassroots-organizing · civil-rights · labor-history · power-structures · political-activism

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