A People’s History of the United States summary

The Iroquois that lived in modern-day New York and Pennsylvania used to own land communally, which meant none of them were homeless. They were also agricultural experts and lived in a matrilineal society; in other words, women chose the men who would represent the tribe’s interests at meetings and, if a man made poor decisions, he would be replaced.

To their European colonizers, who considered women subordinate to men, such a custom was absurd. Furthermore, these Europeans expected the native people of America to submit to the colonial presence, just as they thought women should submit to men. When they didn’t, a destructive animosity erupted.

Certain twentieth-century historians, like Ulrich Phillips, have falsely suggested that African people are naturally submissive. But the fact of the matter is that African slaves participated in uprisings from the very start of the slave trade.

For instance, in 1712, 21 slaves were executed in New York for planning a revolt that killed nine whites. Slave masters knew that their slaves’ spirits and natural will for freedom had to be crushed if slavery was to succeed.

While the US Constitution never even mentions women, that doesn’t mean that women at the time weren’t fighting to make their voices heard.

Before the American Revolution, women were intentionally isolated from one another, making it difficult for them to organize against a society that, at best, treated them with indifference and, at worst, like sex slaves and servants.

Of the many subjects that elementary school history books gloss over, there may be none more explicitly ignored than the topic of American Indian removal and the wars against Mexico of the mid-1800s.

During this period, a series of treaties forced Native American tribes to the west. However, once the US government decided it wanted to continue expanding, these treaties were torn up and the tribes were pushed even further west, in a mass forced migration known as the “Trail of Tears.”

Around the year 1860, just before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, palpable tensions were brewing between the North and South of the United States. In the North, bankers, manufacturers and elite businessmen wanted an economy that would uphold their interests; they advocated a free domestic market with high tariffs to protect against outside competition.

However, what was good for the manufacturers of the North was bad for the plantation owners of the South. The latter saw northern Republicans as unsympathetic to their needs and a threat to their way of life. When Lincoln was finally elected, it provided the spark to ignite this powder keg of animosity. The Southern states began to secede from the Union and a civil war broke out.

Slaves may have secured their freedom, but as they did, they found themselves in a similar financial situation as poor and landless white tenant farmers. To the government, both groups were insignificant and, for freed slaves, their inability to vote meant they were even more subjugated.

But in the 1800s, tenant farmers started to realize that they had another option; they could form unions and improve their lives by standing together. After all, while one small farmer may be easy to exploit, thousands of united farmers are a different story.

In the 1800s, workers began to see how powerful striking was as a tactic – but not all strikes are successful. In fact, some end in tragedy.

For instance, during 1877, 100,000 railroad workers went on strike against lethal conditions and rock-bottom wages. The government called in 9,000 National Guard troops and, in the end, 100 workers were killed.

Do you know why the United States entered World War I? Well, Woodrow Wilson claimed it was because the Germans sunk the Lusitania, an ocean liner that was carrying American passengers. What Americans weren’t told at the time was that the ship was also transporting some 2,000 cases of small arms ammunition, 5,000 boxes of gun cartridges and 1,248 cases of three-inch shells.

Nonetheless, when Wilson spoke about the sinking of the Lusitania, he said that the United States “cannot consent to any abridgment of American rights.” He didn’t unveil the real reasons the United States was eager to enter the war, which were purely economic.

If WWI was a prime example of US hypocrisy, WWII only continued this tradition. For instance, when black soldiers were sent to Europe on the Queen Mary, they were stowed in the bottom of the boat, right next to the engine. Was the treatment of African-Americans much different than the rampant anti-Semitism that existed in Germany at the time?

As it turns out, the president at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, certainly wasn’t preoccupied with German racism; rather, he was concerned with how a war with Japan would affect the US supply of key resources, such as rubber and tin.

During the early 1960s, when speaking publicly about US activity in Vietnam, President John F. Kennedy said the country was working to “assist independence” in Vietnam, helping it break free from the communist regime that had seized power in the country.

However, in private meetings, his administration described interest in “rich exportable surpluses like rice, rubber, tea, corn, tin, spices, oil and many others.”

The Civil Rights movement, an iconic era of American social change, had been brewing for generations when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955. Her simple action ignited a bus boycott and a much broader social movement.

Other nonviolent protests spread across the country, like that of several black men who, in 1960, refused to leave the “whites only” lunch counter of a Woolworth’s department store until the store abandoned its racial segregation policy.

So, the US government has always crushed public dissent and consolidated power for the rich and the few – but by 1972, people were starting to catch on. For instance, a University of Michigan poll that same year asked people, “is the government controlled by a few big interests looking out for themselves?” A total of 53 percent of respondents answered “yes,” whereas in 1964, that number was only 26 percent.

Day by day it became clearer that the rules just didn’t apply to the establishment. Congressional approval was no longer necessary for the country to take military action.

In 1990, an aide for President George H. W. Bush was quoted in the New Yorker. His name was John Sununu and he said, “a short successful war would be pure political gold for the President and would guarantee his reelection.”

Then, on October 28 of the same year, the Washington Post reported that Republicans believed Bush would “initiate combat to prevent further erosion of his support at home.” These foreboding signs pointed to a decision that would change the world forever; on October 30, 1990, in an attempt to raise his approval ratings and increase US control of oil resources in the Middle East, Bush secretly approved Operation Desert Storm.