A Young People's History of the United States

“In the history of the world, there is no country where racism has been more important than in the United States.”

This bold statement opens Chapter 2. When Zinn says that racism has been “important,” he is not indicating that it has in any way been a good thing. Throughout the chapter and the book, he elaborates on the centrality of racism in American history. Racism—initially against Indigenous peoples and Africans—shaped American culture as it developed. Zinn doesn’t initially use the term “white supremacy,” but he illustrates how ideas of white male superiority (for women were not considered equal or even legally or socially autonomous) formed the bedrock of the social, political, and economic orders that the “Founding Fathers” established in the US.

“Traditional histories of the colonies make it seem that the colonists were united in the struggle against England, their outside enemy. But there was much conflict within the colonies. Slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich—disorder broke out along these lines of tension.”

The standard narrative of the American Revolution grossly oversimplifies social divisions within the colonies. The colonists were not a united front against an agreed-upon oppressor. Many poor colonists recognized rich colonists as their oppressors, and wealthy politicians in the colonies were often revolutionary leaders. Many colonists’ lives hardly changed because of the outcome of the American Revolution, and the “lines of tension” that Zinn notes in this passage persisted beyond the war. One of the new American government’s immediate tasks was to deal with continued upheaval and uprisings among even former Continental Army soldiers demanding pay and betterment. Some of the language in the quotation, however, is now out of use and dated. For example, the term “master” has fallen out of favor because, without context, it insinuates a genuine ownership and dominance. Social dynamics rendered some supremely powerful and others largely powerless in day-to-day structures, but the usually positive connotation of the word “master” renders it problematic in this context. Usage of the word should take this larger context into account. “Enslaver” is a popular alternative in the context of slavery.

“By its own language, the Declaration of Independence limited life, liberty, and happiness to white males. But the makers and signers of the Declaration were like other people of their time. Their ideas grew out of the ordinary thinking of their age. We don’t study the Declaration of Independence so that we can point out its moral failures. We study it so we can see how the Declaration drew certain groups of Americans into action while it ignored others. In our time, inspiring words are still used to get large numbers of people to support a cause, even while the same language covers up serious conflicts among people or leaves out whole parts of the human race.”

This passage highlights the limitations of the Declaration of Independence yet contextualizes it as an emblem of society at the time it was created. The inspiring language that Zinn mentions is an important element of the Declaration, despite its obvious shortcomings in paving the way for true and universal equality. The demographics that the Declaration excluded—like African Americans and women—later referenced its rhetorical intent of equality in their own freedom struggles and called out the hypocrisy of ensuring freedom for only a segment of society.

“By the time of the Revolution, certain patterns were already set in the American colonies. Indians had no place in the new society. Blacks were not treated as the equals of whites. The rich and powerful ran things. After the war, the Revolutionary leaders could make those patterns into the law of the new nation.”

Zinn’s discussion of the Revolution takes up the question of how revolutionary the event really was for most people. The war did little to upset the established order that the author outlines in this paragraph. In fact, as Zinn notes here, the national leaders codified inequality after the war by establishing a new legal system. As in the last example, certain terms are now unpopular or dated (like “blacks” instead of “Black people”). Interestingly, Zinn does not directly reference the power men held over women in his short list of examples, although he raises that topic in some detail later in the book.

“What some claimed to be the perfect woman began to appear in sermons and books. Her job was to keep the home cheerful, religious, and patriotic. She was supposed to be her family’s nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, teacher, and flower arranger. She shouldn’t read too much—and certain books must be avoided. Above all, a woman’s role was to meet her husband’s needs.”

This passage refers to the first half of the 19th century, though the attributes it describes were central to normative womanhood both before and long after that period. In the dominant social view, women were caretakers and housekeepers, prioritizing the needs of others above their own but maintaining a friendly and warm demeanor through all the labor that their lives and duty required. Ironically, while women were supposed to be devoutly religious and promote piety within the household, women were not permitted to be church leaders. Just as ironically, as this passage indicates, women were expected to promote patriotism—in a country in which they could not vote or hold political office. The last sentence indicates that the highest power in a woman’s immediate life after marriage was her husband—and indeed, marriage was a virtue and even an objective for young women of previous eras.

“Another land speculator was also a merchant, slave trader, soldier, and future president. He was Andrew Jackson, the harshest enemy of the Indians in early American history.”

This passage exemplifies how Zinn rewrites narratives surrounding conventional American “heroes” to more accurately reflect their objectives and legacies. Andrew Jackson has been widely credited with expanding democracy—but this expansion initially benefited a select group of white men outside the realm of politics. In this quote, Zinn references Jackson’s economic interests—which, in retrospect, seem shameful, and refers to him as an “enemy” to Indigenous Americans. The rest of the chapter examines the ways that Jackson bribed and tricked Native people into forfeiting land—and puts Jackson at the center of an American war machine that fought offensive wars and naturalized racism. In addition, this description of Jackson calls attention to the fact that many early American leaders were wealthy and participated in slavery and conquest.

“Soon afterward, in the summer of 1845, another newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan, wrote, ‘Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.’ O’Sullivan was saying that Americans should be free to occupy all of North America, because God meant for them to.”

“Manifest Destiny” became a tremendously important concept to Americans in the mid-19th century. US expansion began before that period, but the express idea that God intended Americans to conquer the continent became a justification for decades of conquest both across the continent and, eventually, overseas. When John Sullivan coined this term in 1845, the US had recently annexed Texas and was about to instigate a war with Mexico that resulted in a tremendous acquisition of land within a few years.

“These forces created a brief period after the Civil War when blacks in the South voted, elected blacks to state legislatures and to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and introduced free, racially mixed education. New laws protected them from discrimination and guaranteed them equal rights. But because blacks depended on whites for work, their votes could be bought or taken away by the threat of violence.”

The Civil War brought about emancipation, or the end of slavery, but did not truly empower Black people to support themselves or build capital and influence as a community within the US. While Union troops occupied the South after the Civil War, Black men exercised new rights to vote and run for political office with some success. The looming threat of white supremacist backlash, however, persisted throughout this post-war period and worsened after the government removed the troops. Black people did not have ample protection to challenge violence because, as the passage says, white people still controlled the economy and had the capital. This imbalance is at the root of the ongoing debate about reparations due Black people because of their cruel treatment and the fact that they were given symbolic freedom without the tools to fully exercise economic autonomy.

“State and federal laws did not even pretend to protect working people. There were almost no health and safety laws. The laws that did exist were not enforced. When a mill collapsed, killing eighty-eight workers, the court found the owners free of blame, even though there was evidence that they knew the building could not support the heavy machinery inside.”

Labor conditions of the entire 19th century were dangerous, unhealthy, and unethical. From the vantage point of the 21st century, many are likely familiar with workplace standards that protect workers from hazardous material, abuse, and dangerous conditions. These breakthroughs came from labor movement activism and were hard-won battles. Before workplace protections came about in the 20th century, workers frequently got injured, sick, or died because of the deplorable conditions they faced. As the author demonstrates in this passage, the government did not express any concern or seem to care at all. Some of this resulted from a class bias against the poor. The related bigotry of racism and xenophobia was another contributing factor, as many poor workers were immigrants. Among other horrible disasters like the one noted in this passage, the most well-known were accidents that killed immigrant and women workers—groups that typically faced discrimination in society and politics.

“The efficient businessmen of the late nineteenth century are sometimes called robber barons. There were powerful, like the barons of medieval nobility, and much of their wealth was gained through greedy or dishonest methods. In industry after industry they created empires by keeping prices high and wages low, by crushing their competition, and by getting help from the government in the form of favorable laws and taxes. The government pretended to be neutral, but in reality it served the interests of the rich. Its purpose was to settle disputes among the upper classes peacefully, to keep the lower classes under control, and to keep the economic system stable.”

The end of the 19th century contained some of the most violent class conflict in American history. On one side of the spectrum of wealth were the ultra-wealthy, who owned businesses and enjoyed governmental support in their endeavors, regardless of whether their practices were legal. On the other side of the spectrum were poor urban workers and struggling farmers. Within this lower class were Black people, immigrants, and poor whites. The government supported wealthy business owners because they helped the economy grow—and because the ruling elite in the US had a long history of bias against people of color and the poor.

“War was probably not a thought-out plan among most of the elite ruling class. Instead, it grew naturally from two sources, capitalism and nationalism. Capitalism demanded more markets. Nationalism, the spirit of strong national pride, made people think that the United States had a right, or even a duty, to expand itself and to shape the affairs of other countries.”

The war this passage refers to is the age of American imperialism at the end of the 19th century, when American troops went to take over Spanish colonies, including Cuba and the Philippines. Zinn explains how there was an appetite for war, although he specifies that it was not war for war’s sake. American capitalists wanted to extend landholdings across the Pacific so that they could better reach China, a huge country in international trade. Nationalism of the kind the author references here centered on racism. White supremacist ideology characterized people of color all over the world as inferior and uncivilized, and certain Americans believed that it was the duty of civilized nations (in their view, the US and Great Britain), to “uplift” foreign people of color, citing economic and cultural justifications for imperialism.

“Blacks, feminists, labor unions, and socialists saw clearly that they could not count on the national government. And yet history books give the label ‘Progressive Period’ to the early years of the twentieth century. True, it was a time of reforms—but the reforms were made unwillingly. They were not meant to bring about basic changes in society, only to quiet the uprisings of the people.”

Zinn often makes the point that the government is the enemy of working people—that it intentionally keeps them in the bottom bracket of a class system. He rejects the notion that Progressive reformers altruistically brought about societal progress, or even that much genuine progress occurred in respecting working people’s humanity. One could argue that the reform agenda was more than quieting uprisings, although celebrating that perspective might not be fruitful either. For example, reformers carried out Americanization campaigns to homogenize the behavior and values of large immigrant populations.

“At the time, socialists called it an ‘imperialist war’—a war fought in the service of empire building, by nations that wanted to increase their power by controlling territory or resources. The advanced capitalist nations of Europe fought over boundaries, such as the region of Alsace-Lorraine, claimed by both France and Germany. They fought over colonies in Africa. And they fought over ‘spheres of influence,’ areas in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that were not claimed openly as colonies but still came under the ‘protection’ and control of some European nation.”

Zinn is critical of World War I. This passage outlines some reasons why. The death toll of World War I exceeded 20 million, but those lives were not lost in pursuit of a noble cause that increased people’s freedom or defended anyone from brutality. In fact, the war was rather the opposite in the view that this passage expresses. It furthered imperialism and required that people serve and die for already-powerful countries that wanted more global land holdings and influence.

“The New Deal had two goals. The first was to overcome the Depression and make the economy more stable. The second was to give enough help to the lower classes to keep rebellion from turning into a real revolution.”

The New Deal was the legislative program that President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress passed during the Great Depression. It is often remembered as a shift in American government that helped vast swaths of Americans and lifted the nation out of poverty through altruistic government intervention. While the New Deal did stabilize the economy, Zinn emphasizes that stabilization differs from reinvention. The New Deal treated many of the symptoms that American capitalism had wrought by the end of the 1920s, but American politicians did not wish to overturn capitalism moving forward. Zinn discusses in multiple places the pattern of politicians providing just enough for lower classes to win their votes and stamp out open rebellion. That level of reform differs from reworking systems to systematically lift people out of poverty.

“The U.S. government encouraged fear of communism. Any communism-related revolutionary movement in Europe or Asia was made to look as if the Soviets were taking over more of the world.”

A key component of the Cold War in Zinn’s historical narrative is the intentionality with which the US government orchestrated the public perception of it. By promoting fear of Soviet communism, the US government garnered support for American capitalism, its opposite. By presenting any spread of communism around the world as a threat to American security, the US justified foreign intervention, which included manipulating foreign governments and entering wars.

“The federal government was trying to control an explosive situation without making any basic changes. It wanted to channel black anger into traditional places, such as voting booths and quiet meetings with official support.”

From the government’s perspective, civil rights legislation had little to do with a genuine concern for the wellbeing of Black Americans. The government would do just enough—symbolically—to quell the open revolution that was brewing by the end of the 1960s. A major theme in American history is the vehement refusal of those in power to fundamentally alter systems even when those systems are oppressive. The civil rights era was yet another example of grassroots activism forcing change in a system that put its many resources into maintaining the status quo.

“When the United States fought a war in the southeastern Asian nation of Vietnam, it was modern military technology against organized human beings. The human beings won.”

The Vietnam War was the most unpopular war in American history, and many regard it as a complete embarrassment and source of national shame. The US bombed Vietnam as well as its neighbors Laos and Cambodia, released deadly toxins, and recklessly brutalized and murdered Vietnamese people in a war vaguely articulated as a threat to American freedom. The reference to the Vietnamese as “organized human beings” is particularly important because during the war, much US propaganda dehumanized Vietnamese people, presenting them as savage animals instead of capable and clever adversaries. The Vietnamese people, however, had a long history of fending off colonial invaders in continual efforts to maintain their freedom and governance.

“It was a time of revolt. The civil rights movement and the movement against the Vietnam War were part of a larger movement for change. People lost faith in the Establishment—the big powers like business, government, the schools, and the medical industry. They questioned what they were told. They believed that they should be free to think for themselves, and they experimented with new ways of living, teaching, working, and making art.”

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great cultural revolution. Many groups—including Black Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, women, and LGBT people—organized to expose the oppression they faced because of their identities. The atmosphere of the moment provided momentum for this “counterculture” (as it is sometimes called) to emerge. Taking on what Zinn calls “the Establishment”—the status quo and the powerful entities that maintain it—was a colossal task, and each movement had wins and losses. The new perspectives and awareness of intersecting issues, however, was enduring and impactful. This period remains one of the most revolutionary in American history.

“The barrel—the system—was saved. Big business and powerful corporations still had great influence in Washington under President Ford. Whether Nixon or Ford or any Republican or Democrat was president, the system would work pretty much the same way. The power of corporations on the White House is a fact of the American political system, and that didn’t change after Watergate.”

Americans had little faith in the US political system after the Vietnam War and the exposure of President Nixon’s scandals, including the Watergate case. However, this lack of faith did not translate into a remaking of that system. President Ford, Nixon’s successor, was another Republican, but Zinn notes here that any mainstream politician would have upheld the basic contours of “the barrel” that held the rotten apples (Nixon’s administration).

“Two big parts of that tradition are capitalism and nationalism. The economic system of capitalism encourages the growth of great fortunes alongside desperate poverty. Nationalism, the belief that the interests of the United States must always come first around the world, encourages war and preparations for war. Toward the end of the twentieth century, government power swung back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, but neither party offered a new vision of how things could be.”

The “tradition” mentioned in the first sentence of this passage refers to “the American political tradition” as articulated by historian Richard Hofstadter and referenced earlier in the text. With commitments to both capitalism and country that failed to account for human impact, American politicians furthered practices that prevented real change from occurring. Ordinary people and grassroots organizations—not those in charge of the political system—proposed bold solutions to social problems.

“The Columbus controversy sparked a burst of activity in universities and schools. Traditional or mainstream thinkers saw American history as the progress of European culture into a wilderness. They were upset by the movement to look at history in new ways, to tell the stories of the Indians Columbus had murdered, the blacks who had been denied freedom, and the women who had had to fight for equality. But they could not stop the tide of new thinking.”

The 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival to the Americans came in the year 1992, and in the leadup to the planned commemoration events, many Americans (led by Indigenous people) reexamined the legacy of a man that they had long been taught to admire as a brave adventurer and “forefather” of the “civilized,” modern US. In fact, Columbus launched a genocide and countered the welcome that Indigenous people offered with brutality and racism. Overhauling centuries of a positive historical narrative in favor of a critical and depressing one that invited self-reflection for beneficiaries of murderous conquest was difficult. Recognizing violence and inequality in one area invited reexamination of similar patterns in others. Some resisted rethinking these narratives. The reexamination and corrections to untruthful narratives, however, persisted. Understanding American traditions and systems in more detail and with less overt patriotic bias was important to enough people to influence public opinion, popular culture, and public education in the decades to come. Multiple perspectives were at least in the open.

“Together, cuts in the military budget and higher taxes on the superrich could have given the government as much as $500 billion each year to pay for dramatic changes. This money could have paid for health care for everyone and for programs to create jobs for all. Instead of giving out contracts for companies to build bombers and nuclear submarines, the government could have given contracts to nonprofit agencies to hire people to build homes, clean up rivers, and construct public transportation systems.”

Zinn (as well as many other commentators during the period in question and since) makes the point that the government could have made money available for fixing social ills in the US but lacked the political will to allocate it wisely. To the Establishment, being so thoroughly steeped in nationalism and capitalism (see Quote 21), cutting the military budget and taxing the wealthy were options not up for consideration. The possible initiatives that the quote lists—construction of infrastructure and environmental efforts—are just some examples of needed services that would improve the quality and affordability of life for average citizens.

“Critics of the bombing felt that terrorism was rooted in deep complaints against the United States. The way to stop terrorism was to respond to these complaints.”

When the US began dropping bombs on Afghanistan to try to locate Al-Qaeda, critics lamented the perpetuation of war that took civilian lives as the only strategy the government seemed willing to pursue. People around the world had legitimate reasons to hate the US, but without being able to match its might in conventional warfare, groups planned terrorist attacks on civilians to express their hatred. Reckoning with the harm that the US government had done around the world, however, requires a reconsideration of capitalist and nationalist priorities, which Zinn says is beyond what any mainstream party is willing to entertain.