A Young People's History of the United States

Rebecca Stefoff adapted Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States for a younger audience. Her expertise is in writing for children and young adults. She has authored books for young readers on various topics, ranging from science to historical biographies. She has collaborated with other authors on several of her books. In addition, she has adapted other works of nonfiction for young audiences, including Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore, which examines Asian American history. This work brings important concepts to a wider readership, helping young people think about the many social issues around them, and provides perspective to Stefoff’s adaptation of Zinn’s book for young readers.

Many narratives of American history start with Columbus, a European who (accidentally) “discovered” the “New World” (the Americas) in 1492 and started a new trans-Atlantic exchange of people, goods, and services. This has often been a celebratory tale in American popular culture, but Zinn offers a much more critical interpretation of the event and the legacy of that initial contact between Columbus and the people he met where he landed (for he did not discover a new land—only a land new to Europeans). This critical view, which highlights the cruelty with which Columbus’s party and other early Europeans treated the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, gathered awareness and importance in American education around the turn of the 21st century.

Columbus was sailing with the objective to find a trade route via sea to India and southeast Asia from Europe. Europeans wanted easier access to goods from that region. Seeing that where he landed in the Bahamas was full of resources and contained gold, however, Columbus and the Spanish monarchs he represented turned their attention to colonizing that land, forcing its Indigenous people into slavery, and using that forced labor to extract gold. He directly brutalized the Arawaks, and Spain’s colonial system in the Arawak homelands decimated the Arawak population.

Other Europeans soon followed similar trade routes to other parts of the Americas and encountered different Indigenous groups. These men are often called the “conquistadors,” or “conquerors.” They facilitated other sites of cruel colonization. Zinn mentions a few in the book. Among the most famous are Hernán Cortes, who invaded Mexico and faced the Aztecs, and Francisco Pizarro, who invaded the Incas in South America. Zinn makes the point that the patterns of these meetings—greed for riches, brutality toward Indigenous people, seized territory for European empires—set the stage for continuing European colonization in the Americas.

Indigenous (Native) peoples of the Americas occupied lands and established rich and vibrant cultures long before the arrival of Europeans. However, even the brutal colonialism and warfare that Europeans and, later, Americans unleashed in Indigenous homelands did not eradicate Indigenous peoples, despite the devastating destruction of homelands and populations—and despite attempts to eradicate their culture. Over time, Indigenous people had increasingly more in common because they faced a shared threat of encroachment and exploitation; however, tribes (one word used to describe distinct cultural groups of Native peoples) represented a huge amount of diversity across the continent—even across the land that became the US. Often relegated to a primitive “prehistory” of the US in conventional histories, Native people created vast trade networks and complex cultures. In addition, they knew how to survive the various climates in which they lived—survival skills that Europeans desperately needed upon their arrival.

Native people endured bribery, trickery, and attack as the US expanded westward and aimed to acquire new swaths of land. Many groups signed treaties with the government that outlined terms for land occupation and ownership as well as agreements about supplies and resources. The government broke many of these treaties. Native people resisted colonialism in numerous ways. Some groups were formidable forces on the battlefield. Others tried to maintain diplomatic relationships to secure better conditions for their communities. Strategies varied, but Indigenous peoples were (and are) not the stereotypical caricatures that American popular culture has depicted. They maintain traditions specific to their own communities and have also contributed to the growth of American society and culture.

The “Founding Fathers” were a group of political and social leaders that established the United States of America during and following the American Revolution at the end of the 18th century. They include well-known historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other early presidents; Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and other revolutionaries; and Alexander Hamilton and other early political leaders. American historical narratives have long celebrated these figures as heroic visionaries who, against the odds, defeated the most powerful military in the world (England’s) and brought democracy to the Americas. Zinn presents this group as disproportionately wealthy and powerful men who were self-interested and who, in general, distrusted the masses in favor of rule by the elite class, which included themselves. Influential men in the colonies (before the Revolution) became increasingly frustrated with British rule in the way that it taxed and infringed on their property rights. In this view, the American Revolution was essentially a transfer of power from one ruling elite to another. Many historical commentators of lower classes noted this dynamic at the time. For this ruling class of Founders, the Revolution brought great power and influence, but for many common people, the Revolution brought little or no change in daily life.

Importantly, the Founding Fathers articulated narratives of freedom that other groups—beyond the ruling white male elite—attempted to capitalize on throughout the rest of American history. For example, the Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal,” though in effect this statement at the time extended only to white male property owners. In subsequent decades, people of color cited this foundational language in freedom struggles that continually expanded the body politic (the people who are eligible to vote, run for office, and participate in American politics).

Enslaved Black people were important historical actors and shaped American history in far more ways than they are often credited. The first enslaved Black people who were forcibly removed from homelands in Africa and transported to English colonies on land that became the US arrived in the Jamestown, Virginia colony in 1619. Zinn notes that by that time, “a million blacks had been forcibly brought from Africa to work as slaves in the mines and sugar plantations of the Portuguese and Spanish colonies in South America and the Caribbean islands” (26). As colonial slavery expanded and enslaved people faced trauma and brutality, they found ways to form families and culture despite their bondage. They also found ways to resist their enslavers, such as by running away, organizing revolt (which was rare but a major source of anxiety for white plantation owners in the South), breaking equipment, or working slowly.

The Union could not have won the Civil War without Black people—both free Black people who worked as activists and abolitionists in the North and the Black people escaping slavery and joining Union troops as the Union Army advanced through the South. Black people fought for their freedom, and the government eventually caught up to abolish slavery.

The legacy of slavery, however, stayed with Black Americans. After emancipation (the end of slavery), the government failed to provide Black families with land or resources, and they had to rely on white employers in abusive labor arrangements.

Enslaved Black people, against their will, built the structures of the early US—even the Capitol Building that represents it—and its entire economy. No one in bondage, however, is rendered inhuman by it, no matter how bad the treatment. Remember enslaved Black people—or any unfree people—requires remembering that they had desires, pursuits, and accomplishments outside the context of their labor.

Zinn discusses few presidents at any length in A Young People’s History. Andrew Jackson is one of those few because his persona and presidency are so important to the emergent character of the US—and because his legacy is, in Zinn’s critical view, so wrongfully celebrated in popular American history narratives. A subsection that describes Andrew Jackson’s career in Chapter 7 is called “From Indian Fighter to President” (105). Jackson’s rise to political stardom came through his military service in “Indian Wars”—wars against Native nations for the purpose of seizing land. Jackson not only carried out battles against Indigenous groups but directly benefited from land seizure as a speculator. Additionally, he was an enslaver and a capitalist.

Jackson was largely responsible for “Indian Removal”—the forced relocation of Native people east of the Mississippi River to designated lands in a reserved “Indian Country,” which later became Oklahoma. Thousands of Native people died during forced marches.

Jackson is often credited with expanding democracy to the “common man” while president. The term for this development is often “Jacksonian Democracy.” Zinn exposes this concept as a myth (154). By allowing a larger percentage of white men to participate in elections, the government gained “a large base of support among white people” who only “[believed] that they had a voice in government and that government looked out for their interests” (154). However, politicians did only the bare minimum to make their own party more appealing to workers and farmers than their political rival.

Although Zinn does not organize his historical inquiry around presidencies or even emphasize individual presidents consistently throughout the book, he continually presents them as a group of self-interested and power-hungry men working to uphold the Establishment to the greatest degree possible against ongoing social protest. Zinn notes the indifference to the working class that nearly all US presidents seem to have exerted. In addition, he calls out the racism prevalent in the agendas of presidents throughout history. However, not merely the presidents were responsible for the shape of American society. They were part of a larger power structure that enabled men like them—typically white and wealthy—to obtain the top jobs and make some of the most important decisions in society. They did not wish to upset this power structure because they benefited from it.