ABSTRACT

History can help our struggles, if not conclusively, then at least suggestively. It was Harvard-educated John Kennedy, author of two books on history, who presided over the American invasion of and the lies that accompanied it. Anyone reading history should understand from the start that there is no such thing as impartial history. If it is read narrowly, as an incident in the history of the trade union movement and the coal industry, then it is an angry splotch in the past, fading rapidly amidst new events. All historians, by their writing, have some effect on the present social situation, whether they choose to be presentists or not. Everyone does need to learn history, the kind that does not put its main emphasis on knowing presidents and statutes and Supreme Court decisions. In rethinking our history, trying to look at it from the point of view of those who have been left out of the benefits of so-called civilizations.