{"id":2341,"date":"2020-08-29T15:45:22","date_gmt":"2020-08-29T19:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=2341"},"modified":"2020-08-29T15:45:22","modified_gmt":"2020-08-29T19:45:22","slug":"blog-post-8-30-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2020\/08\/29\/blog-post-8-30-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 8\/30"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having grown up in Mississippi, I am no stranger to a revisionist portrayal of our nation\u2019s history. Following the Reconstruction era, white southerners rewrote the history of the Civil War and indoctrinated generations of white students with the false narrative of an unjustified federal government takeover of the South. This ploy proved successful, contributing to the rise of the KKK and the glorification of the Confederate battle flag and Confederate monuments. The parallels are striking between the white South\u2019s revisionist history of the Civil War and Howard Zinn\u2019s first chapter of \u201cA People\u2019s History of the United States,\u201d titled \u201cColumbus, the Indians, and Human Progress.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Zinn\u2019s depiction of Columbus\u2019 discovery of the Americas offers an insight into the bleak reality of this chapter of American history. One story that stuck out to me was Columbus\u2019 treatment of the Arawaks. In his journey to find gold, Columbus came across the Arawak people, whom he treated as commodities that could fill the void of gold. Zinn described the genocide of the Arawak people: \u201cIn two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead\u201d (Zinn 348). The Arawaks who were not murdered outright were worked to death: \u201cBy the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawkas or their descendants left on the island\u201d (Zinn 348).<\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard historian and author of <\/span>Christopher Columbus, Mariner<\/span><\/i> (1954), buried the numerous accounts of enslavement and murder such as this one under a glorification of Columbus\u2019 journey and discovery of America. Morison\u2019s book is not the exception, though. Prior to Howard Zinn\u2019s textbook, stories like these were often neglected. This neglect did not occur because of a lack of evidence suggesting a different narrative, though.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas, a priest who became a \u201cvehement critic of Spanish cruelty\u201d wrote many reports of the conquistador\u2019s mistreatment of the Indian people (Zinn 348). Las Casas described the \u201cEndless testimonies \u2026 [that] prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives \u2026 But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then \u2026 The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians\u201d (Zinn 364-382).<\/span><\/p>\n

Howard Zinn\u2019s PHUS paints a picture of entitlement and superiority, and an indifference to human life. While this picture is frightening and largely untold, it is indicative of what the future of America would hold: oppression of many, enforced by the leadership of a few, endorsed by a white, male populace resistant to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Citation numbers reference Kindle location for E-Book, not physical page number<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having grown up in Mississippi, I am no stranger to a revisionist portrayal of our nation\u2019s history. Following the Reconstruction era, white southerners rewrote the…<\/p>\n

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