The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known

by Howard Zinn

Overview

Collected here is a brief history of America told through stories applauding the enduring spirit of dissent.

To celebrate the millionth copy sold of his book A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn drew on the words of Americans—some famous, some little known—across the range of American history. These words were read by a remarkable cast at an event held at the 92nd Street Y in New York City that included James Earl Jones, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Harris Yulin, Andre Gregory, and others. From that celebration, this book was born.

Here in their own words, and interwoven with commentary by Zinn, are Columbus on the Arawaks; Plough Jogger, a farmer and participant in Shays' Rebellion; Harriet Hanson, a Lowell mill worker; Frederick Douglass; Mark Twain; Mother Jones; Emma Goldman; Helen Keller; Eugene V. Debs; Langston Hughes; Genova Johnson Dollinger on a sit-down strike at General Motors in Flint, Michigan; an interrogation from a 1953 HUAC hearing; Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper and member of the Freedom Democratic Party; Malcolm X; and James Lawrence Harrington, a Gulf War resister, among others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060578268
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/02/2004
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.23(d)

About the Author

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and social activist. In addition to A People’s History of the United States, which has sold more than two million copies, he is the author of numerous books including The People Speak, Passionate Declarations, and the autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

Read an Excerpt

The People Speak
American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known

Chapter One

Introductory Excerpt from
A People's History of the United States

NARRATOR
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can "see" history from the standpoint of others.

My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those wars, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run, the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

Stiff, understanding the complexities, I will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don't want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: "The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is."

The People Speak
American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known. Copyright © by Howard Zinn. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Publisher's Note	ix
1.	Introductory Excerpt from: A People's History of the United States	1
2.	Columbus and Las Casas	3
3.	Shays' Rebellion	5
4.	Lowell Mill Girl	7
5.	Indian Removal	9
6.	Women's Declaration of Rights	11
7.	Frederick Douglass	15
8.	John Brown and Frederick Douglass	17
9.	Henry Turner	21
10.	Mark Twain	25
11.	IWW and Lawrence Strike	29
12.	Mother Jones	31
13.	Emma Goldman	33
14.	Helen Keller	35
15.	Eugene Debs	37
16.	The Harlem Renaissance	41
17.	Sit-Down Strike at Flint	45
18.	Catch-22	49
19.	HUAC Interrogation	53
20.	Fannie Lou Hamer	57
21.	Malcolm X	61
22.	Vietnam	65
23.	The Women's Movement	69
24.	Chicanos and Vietnam	71
25.	Gulf War Resister	75
26.	Poverty in Our Time	77
27.	Post-September 11: Families for Peaceful Tomorrows	79
	Acknowledgments	81