The People Speak

I first picked up Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when I was in college. It was a revelation. For the first time, I felt like I was reading about real Americans as they made their way through history.

Here, for instance, Zinn quotes women’s rights advocate Emma Willard on the prudishness found at one of the first girls’ schools:

Mothers visiting a class at the Seminary in the early [1830s] were so shocked at the sight of a pupil drawing a heart, arteries and veins on a blackboard to explain the circulation of the blood, that they left the room in shame and dismay. To preserve the modesty of the girls, and spare them too frequent agitation, heavy paper was pasted over the pages in their textbooks which depicted the human body.

This Sunday, the History Channel will bring Zinn’s research to the small screen in a documentary called The People Speak. Though not a Ken Burns film, it gives Zinn the full Burns treatment. Actors like Morgan Freeman and Marisa Tomei will give voice to the letters, diaries, and speeches of ordinary Americans.

Zinn has no shortage of critics, and there is a lot to be critical about. He is a genuine political radical with, shall we say, unorthodox views on subjects like 9/11 and U.S. politics in general. But Zinn remains unapologetic about his biases. He once wrote that “the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction – so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements – that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.”

Buckle up for a little dissent and check out The People Speak on Sunday.