sapphire blue
“She had sapphire blue eyes that sparkled with a far-off light whose source must have been in the stars.”
—Andrei Codrescu, Casanova in Bohemia, 2002.
Freedoms
“Freedoms are not given, they are taken.”
—Peter Kropotkin, from Words of a Rebel, a collection of his writing from 1872 to 1882.
the last sun that shone on Black Hawk
“I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . . He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceiful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal.”
—Chief Black Hawk, from his surrender speach, 1832; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.
the Cherokee Phoenix
“The Cherokees’ language—heavily poetic, metaphorical, beautifully expressive, supplemented by dance, drama, and ritual—had always been a language of voice and gesture. Now their chief, Sequoyah, invented a written language, which thousands learned. The Cherokees’ newly established Legislative Council voted money for a printing press, which on February 21, 1828, began publishing a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, printed in both English and Sequoyah’s Cherokee.”
—Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present, 1999.
“the Man”
“It was in the [post Civil War] South that the crop-lien system was most brutal. By this system the farmer would get the things he needed from the merchant: the use of the cotton gin at harvest time, whatever supplies were necessary. He didn’t have money to pay, so the merchant would get a lien—a mortgage on his crop–on which the farmer might pay 25 percent interest. . . . The man with the ledger became to the farmer “the furnishing man,” to black farmers simply “the Man.” The farmer would owe more money every year until finally his farm was taken away and he became a tenant.”
—Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present, 1999.
The Rebel Girl
“There are blue-blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl,
But the only and Thoroughbred Lady
Is the Rebel Girl.”
—Joe Hill, Rebel Girl, a song included in the IWW Little Red Song Book of the nineteen-teens; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.
this abyss of blood and darkness
“The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness . . . is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be . . . gradually bettering.”
—Henry James, a letter to a friend a few days after the England declared World War One; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.
golden oranges
“And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low. . . .”
—John Steinbeck, from his novel of the depression, The Grapes of Wrath; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.
red sons-of-bitches
“I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. . . . They were Commies . . . red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago. . . .”
—Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer in One Lonely Night, 1951; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.
a strange black race
“I want to see lithe Negro girls,
Etched dark against the sky
While sunset lingers. . . .
I want to hear the chanting
Around a heathen fire
Of a strange black race. . . .
I want to feel the surging
Of my sad people’s soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.”
—Gwendolyn Bennet, a poem from the 1930s; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.