Howard Zinn on America's Selective Memory

[wolven7]

From 3QuarksDaily: 'Why not organize a public forum on the Pequot Massacre of 1636, when our Puritan ancestors, in an expedition led by Captain John Mason, set fire to a village of Pequot Indians on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound? Here's how William Bradford, an early settler, described the attack in his History of Plymouth Plantation:

'Those that scaped the fire, were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400.

'"It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day," wrote the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather, an expert on the destination of souls.

'The massacres of American Indians by the armies of the United States-in Colorado in 1864, in Montana in 1870, in South Dakota in 1890, to cite just a few-were massacres in the most literal sense: that is, wholesale slaughter of hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children. The number of those events cannot be counted, and should by that fact be a subject for intense scrutiny.'

Howard Zinn wrote the best history book I've ever used, and he has some of the most comprehensive knowledge of American History that I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Definitely worth a look.

Comments

[elioraceit.livejournal.com]

I love that he it not just Howard Zinn, but " Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Supress." Brilliant.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That's the wonderful thing about telling the truth, loudly, eloquently, and consistently. Eventually people like hearing you, so much, they seek you out.

Pass it on.