(Howard Zinn on views of history) Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] Unsung Heroes (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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This has much to do with discussions which have occurred on this list.

Dave

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> http://www.progressive.org/zinn0600.htm
>
> The Progressive
>
> June 1, 2000
>
> It Seems to ME
>
> Unsung Heroes
>
> By Howard Zinn <hzinn at bu.edu>
>
> A high school student recently confronted me: "I
> read in your book A People's History of the United
States about the massacres of Indians, the long
history of racism, the persistence of poverty in the
richest country in the world, the senseless wars. How
can I keep from being thoroughly alienated and
depressed?"
>
> It's a question I've heard many times before.
> Another question often put to me by students is:
Don't we need our national idols? You are taking down
all our national heroes
> -- the Founding Fathers, Andrew Jackson, Abraham
> Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F.
Kennedy.
>
> Granted, it is good to have historical figures we
> can admire and emulate. But why hold up as models
the
> fifty-five rich white men who drafted the
Constitution as a way of establishing a government
that would protect the interests of their class --
slaveholders, merchants, bondholders, land
speculators?
>
> Why not recall the humanitarianism of William Penn,
> an early colonist who made peace with the Delaware
Indians instead of warring on them, as other colonial
leaders were doing?
>
> Why not John Woolman, who, in the years before the
> Revolution, refused to pay taxes to support the
> British wars, and who spoke out against slavery?
>
> Why not Captain Daniel Shays, veteran of the
> Revolutionary War, who led a revolt of poor farmers
in Western Massachusetts against the oppressive taxes
levied by the rich who controlled the Massachusetts
legislature?
>
> Why go along with the hero-worship, so universal in
> our history textbooks, of Andrew Jackson, the
> slave-owner, the killer of Indians? Jackson was the
architect of the Trail of Tears, which resulted in the
deaths of 4,000 of 16,000 Cherokees who were kicked
off their land in Georgia and sent into exile in
Oklahoma.
>
> Why not replace him as national icon with John Ross,
> a Cherokee chief who resisted the dispossession of
his people, and whose wife died on the Trail of Tears?
Or the Seminole leader Osceola, imprisoned and finally
killed for leading a guerrilla campaign against the
removal of the Indians?
>
> And while we're at it, should not the Lincoln
> Memorial be joined by a memorial to Frederick
Douglass, who better represented the struggle against
slavery? It was that crusade of black and white
abolitionists, growing into a great national movement,
that pushed a reluctant Lincoln into finally issuing a
half-hearted Emancipation Proclamation, and persuaded
Congress to pass the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth amendments.
>
> Take another Presidential hero, Theodore Roosevelt,
> who is always near the top of the tiresome lists of
Our Greatest Presidents. There he is on Mount
Rushmore, as a permanent reminder of our historical
amnesia about his racism, his militarism, his love of
war.
>
> Why not replace him as hero -- granted, removing him
> from Mount Rushmore will take some doing -- with
Mark
> Twain? Roosevelt, remember, had congratulated an
American general who in 1906 ordered the massacre of
600 men, women, and children on a Philippine island.
As vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League,
Twain denounced this and continued to point out the
cruelties committed in the Philippine war under the
slogan "My country, right or wrong."
>
> As for Woodrow Wilson, another honored figure in the
> pantheon of American liberalism, shouldn't we remind
> his admirers that he insisted on racial segregation
in federal buildings, that he bombarded the Mexican
coast, sent an occupation army into Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, brought our country into the hell
of World War I, and put anti-war protesters in prison?
>
> Should we not bring forward as a national hero Emma
> Goldman, one of those Wilson sent to prison, or
Helen Keller, who fearlessly spoke out against the
war?
>
> And enough worship of John F. Kennedy, a Cold
> Warrior who began the covert war in Indochina, went
along with the planned invasion of Cuba, and was slow
to act against racial segregation in the South.
>
> Should we not replace the portraits of our
> Presidents, which too often take up all the space on
our classroom walls, with the likenesses of grassroots
heroes like Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi
sharecropper? Mrs. Hamer was evicted from
> her farm and tortured in prison after she joined the
> civil rights movement, but she became an eloquent
voice for freedom. Or with Ella Baker, whose wise
counsel and support guided the young black people in
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the
militant edge of the civil rights movement in the Deep
South?
>
> In the year 1992, the quincentennial of the arrival
> of Columbus in this hemisphere, there were meetings
all over the country to celebrate him, but also, for
the first time, to challenge the customary exaltation
of the Great Discoverer. I was at a symposium in New
Jersey where I pointed to the terrible crimes against
the indigenous people of Hispaniola committed by
Columbus and his fellow Spaniards. Afterward, the
other man on the platform, who was chairman of the New
Jersey Columbus Day celebration, said to me: "You
don't understand -- we Italian Americans need our
> heroes." Yes, I understood the desire for heroes, I
> said, but why choose a murderer and kidnapper for
such an honor? Why not choose Joe DiMaggio, or
Toscanini, or Fiorello LaGuardia, or Sacco and
Vanzetti? (The man was not persuaded.)
>
> The same misguided values that have made
> slaveholders, Indian-killers, and militarists the
heroes of our history books still operate today. We
have heard Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona,
repeatedly referred to as a war hero. Yes, we must
sympathize with McCain's ordeal as a war prisoner in
Vietnam, where he endured cruelties.  But must we call
someone a hero who participated in the invasion
> of a far-off country and dropped bombs on men,
> women, and children?
>
> I came across only one voice in the mainstream press
> daring to dissent from the general admiration for
McCain -- that of the poet, novelist, and Boston Globe
columnist James Carroll. Carroll contrasted the
heroism of McCain, the warrior, to that of Philip
Berrigan, who has gone to prison dozens of times for
protesting the war in Vietnam and the dangerous
nuclear arsenal maintained by our government.
> Carroll wrote: "Berrigan, in jail, is the truly free
> man, while McCain remains imprisoned in an
unexamined
> sense of martial honor."
>
> Our country is full of heroic people who are not
> Presidents or military leaders or Wall Street
wizards, but who are doing something to keep alive the
spirit of resistance to injustice and war.
>
> I think of Kathy Kelly and all those other people
> from Voices in the Wilderness who, in defiance of
federal law, have traveled to Iraq more than a dozen
times to bring food and medicine to people suffering
under the U.S.-imposed sanctions.
>
> I think also of the thousands of students on more
> than 100 college campuses across the country who are
> protesting their universities' connection with
sweatshop-produced apparel.
>
> I think of the four McDonald sisters in Minneapolis,
> all nuns, who have gone to jail repeatedly for
> protesting against the Alliant Corporation's
production of land mines.
>
> I think, too, of the thousands of people who have
> traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia, to demand the
closing of the murderous School of the Americas.
>
> I think of the West Coast Longshoremen who
> participated in an eight-hour work stoppage to
protest the death sentence levied against Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
>
> And so many more.
>
> We all know individuals -- most of them unsung,
> unrecognized -- who have, often in the most modest
ways, spoken out or acted on their beliefs for a more
egalitarian, more just, peace-loving society.
>
> To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only
> necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the
past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes
of the present.
>
>
> Howard Zinn is a columnist for The Progressive.
>
> Copyright (c) 2000 The Progressive, Madison, WI.
>
>
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=====
"Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglass, August 1857

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