Natalie’s Reviews > A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present > Status Update

Labor riots in the late 1800s.

Ch9: Covers how enslaved People were not at all submissive, Reconstruction worked but was abandoned for money, and that over 100 years of lynching and violence, Black people continued to strive for equality. Also, provides scholarship on how chain gangs provided labor, and that Black men were disproportionately put into chain gangs—roots of modern prison system.

The Mexican War. Barbarous, gross.

YASS WOMEN! I learned about several women from the late 1700s-1800s who fought for rights and for abolition and the poor. They even had a “coffee party” similar to the Boston Tea Party.

Interesting perspective on events leading up to the revolution. Zinn frames the Am. Rev. as one of the middle class with little regard for the poor. The poor “mobs” looted rich men’s homes to highlight wealth disparities. They were not allowed to vote, were put in prison for being poor, and then drafted into the war while the rich (who started the war) paid for substitutes to fight in their place.

I enjoyed reading about the slave rebellions and how difficult it was to keep slaves down, so difficult, in fact, that an entire system was constructed to do so. I enjoyed it because it is HUMANIZING slaves—they were not meek, ignorant, beasts who dumbly “went along.” They organized, protested, and asserted their humanity at great costs. This is a true story that does not negate the pain, cruelty or suffering.

So far, not a lot of new information but I am appreciative of the style and presentation. It is also good to be reminded of things that “I know.” The genocide of human beings by Columbus and those who followed him is disgusting.