Midlands Voices: Historian Zinn gave fuller picture of our country's past

The writer, of Council Bluffs, is a professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

About a month ago (Feb. 3 More Commentary), Ron Radosh sharply criticized the late Howard Zinn's approach to American history. Radosh's attack against Zinn's version of U.S. history adds to the misunderstanding.

This misunderstanding is especially important because we now face realities that will force us into a new grasp of our history. The growing economic power of the European Union, the rise of the enormous Chinese economy and a rising Indian economy are only part of this new history.

American historians face a dilemma. On one hand, they must reconstruct our history based on available facts. On the other hand, they must provide a satisfying story of the nation — a story that will work its way into classrooms and into the hearts and minds of children and adults.

For example, schoolchildren celebrate the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth in search of religious freedom as the founding of the nation. Each Thanksgiving week, children have decorated rooms and acted out the first Thanksgiving. Millions of us have at one time or another donned someone's notion of Pilgrim or Native American clothing and invited each other to dinner. Construction-paper covers taped to tennis shoes became moccasins or pilgrim shoes.

It is a good story that tells an important truth about freedom. But it is not exactly factual. Thirteen years before Plymouth, Jamestown, Va., had been settled. A century before Plymouth, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe had been sending Spanish missionaries north into California.

It was a century later when Abraham Lincoln declared the first day of Thanksgiving, largely to distract a troubled nation from the growing horrors of the American Civil War.

Radosh attacked Zinn for writing an American history “from the bottom up.” And Zinn did exactly that. The American story from the bottom of our shared life differs from the “great story” of American history.

For example, I recently went to a fine exhibition of war posters, organized by Sam Walker in the UNO library. I stood stunned in front of a poster that notified Japanese-Americans they were to report to a confinement center carrying only essential belongings. That poster was raw history. I thought immediately of my friend Ken Yoshida's family, who lost everything.

Radosh claims that Zinn's history is for “those who know little.” Radosh's remark is part of a denial that is digging us into a very deep hole: We cannot address what we refuse to know. Zinn purposefully introduced deeply disturbing facts into the nation's story.

So what is a patriotic American to do when the great American story no longer fits the facts? I think we begin where the Puritans began — with the dream of building a city on a hill. True, they had no idea how hard that struggle would be. Zinn reminded us that history in a democracy is hard.

Like the little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead, when Americans are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are horrid.

It took too long to acknowledge that people of African ancestry were human beings and even longer to acknowledge they were citizens. It took too long to recognize that American women were citizens. We must be reminded that the first purpose of our commerce is to supply our people with the necessary provisions of life.

This is not a call for equality, nor even for justice. It is a call for simple decency. Zinn reminded us, painfully, how often we have failed to be decent.

Only by facing, rather than denying, hard facts can we spur our sense of decency. Such spurring can help us create a better history, which is the constant and heavy responsibility of all citizens of all generations.

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