Students Read People's History

The stories we tell ourselves about our own past are the result of hundreds of voices — both named and otherwise — coming together to paint a picture. Each voice has its own volume and each listener comes with their own biases, so these pictures of our past are just that: only pictures. As time marches on, the quieter or disenfranchised voices fall to the side, and it falls on our shoulders to seek out these stories in order to better understand the past.

On April 9, Middlebury students will put on “Voices of the People’s History of the United States,” reading passages from historian Howard Zinn’s book filled with letters and speeches by people intimately involved in the social movement history of the United States.

The event is co-produced by Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie McCallum and Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Dana Yeaton and is co-sponsored by the history, sociology, political science and English departments and The Oratory Society. It will open with a lecture by Francis Fox Piven, world-renowned sociologist and political scientist of social movements and a longtime friend of Zinn.

“She was invoked by Glenn Beck a few years ago for developing a plan to try and undermine American capitalism,” McCallum said. “He did a multi-part series about it. But her “plot,” so to speak, was actually quite old by that time. She was well-known in the ’60s and ’70s and now she’s famous again, largely because of [Beck] in some weird way.”

While McCallum comes to this event from the stand point of a sociologist, Yeaton hopes to emphasize the performance aspect.

“Last spring, [McCallum] and I worked together on a reading of MLK’s ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail,’” Yeaton said in an email. “So I was excited when he proposed a follow up project. And because of The Oratory Society, I knew we had students who could bring the speeches to life. These speeches are the definition of theatrical: each one was calibrated, not just to capture and hold attention, but to provoke its audience into action. And of course, it’s a live solo performance, which is always a high-wire act.”

Students will read different stories from the Howard Zinn piece in order to frame the history of American social activism in a way that uses the voices of those directly involved. The book was the primary source companion to Zinn’s book “The People’s History of the United States,” which was written in 1980 to tell the story of the United States through the voices of the common people, not the economic and political elites that often dominate textbooks.

“Because that book ends in the early 21st-century,” McCallum said, “we’ll find a few more things from the last ten years to fill in the gaps. We may add something from Occupy Wall Street such as a speech that was given there.” McCallum added that the program for the event has not been finalized, and that what will be added is not fully known yet.

“There was a student-ran course over J-term called the People’s History of Middlebury that culminated in a panel discussion with two ’70s radicals who were Middlebury students,” he said. “We may have something read from that as well.”

The show is not unique to Middlebury and has been performed countless times throughout the country.

“The reason this show is done so often is that these words — spoken well, with full understanding — have enormous intellectual and emotional power,” Yeaton said. “They rattle us. They remind us of our ideals and our hypocrisies. So I’m excited to be in the room and watch these words hit home.”

The hosts of the event hope, just as Zinn did, to give a voice to those who may not always be heard in a retelling of American history.  While history books may focus on the romanticized stories of our Founding Fathers, they often glance over the blood and strife that went into this country’s founding and the fact that many of them were slave-owners. Stories about the struggles of labor movements and civil rights activism often become clouded by the political leanings of those telling them. This event aims to give voices to all involved. The book itself includes selections by people such as Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Malcolm X and Allen Ginsberg.

“It’s history from below,” McCallum said. “You could do a people’s sociology of the United States if you wanted to. The benefit of getting those voices is not just that they’re diverse, but people tell truths from their own perspectives and unless you’re getting all of them, you’re not getting the full story.”

The event will take place on April 9 from 7 – 10 p.m. in the Abernethy Room.