This Land Is Your Land and Your History and Mine Too

 Michele L. Norris is an American journalist who currently works as an opinion columnist with The Washington Post. From 2002 until 2011, she was co-host of the National Public Radio (NPR) evening news program All Things Considered. Norris was the first African-American female host for National Public Radio (NPR)

"We do our children no favors if we only feed them a steady diet of fairy tales that sidestep life’s complexities."  Michele Norris

"Students need to learn the full story — the haters and the helpers — and years from now, looking back on this moment too, they should know that a group of hesitant scolds tried to keep America’s schools from addressing the forces of racial bias and white supremacy that have shaped almost every aspect of American life."  Michele Norris

Howard Zinn wrote "A People's History Of The United States". 

The book was from a Social Concerns group at the "First Unitarian Univeralist Church in Miami, Florida.

A People's History of the United States is a 1980 nonfiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn presented what he considered to be a different side of history from the more traditional "fundamental nationalist glorification of country".^[1] Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.

 I want young people to understand that ours is a beautiful country, but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties. Our people are basically decent and caring, and our highest ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all of us have an equal right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The book by Zinn did present a different side of American History, one that highlighted some stuff that we are still dealing with.  As I remember the book made such a big impression on the people that read the book that Howard Zinn was a paid speaker at the church with money raised from recycling newspapers, cans, and glass.  

Too often it seems that the writers of history simplify stuff to the level of a baseball box score or a horse race.  The lives we live are a swirl and it is understandable to minimize the shortcomings we all have experienced, but it is in those experiences we train ourselves.