Let Us Now Praise Famous Men… and Women
As we all know, the corporate media overly celebrates the same limited number of prominent men and women. But my latest (and last) history book, By the Light of Burning Dreams (coauthored with my sister Margaret) shines a spotlight on several revolutionary leaders of the 1960s and ‘70s who have been forgotten by history — at least history as told by Ken Burns, Jon Meacham, Walter Isaacson, Malcolm Gladwell and the other mass-marketed gatekeepers of our past. Margaret and I are so delighted that our book events have drawn together a reunion of these Movement movers and shakers, including Heather Booth and Bill Zimmerman, who’ve joined us for some of our Zoom interviews. Heather and Bill were everywhere during this volcanic history. They both began their activist lives in the deep South during Freedom Summer in 1964. Heather then went on to organize the underground abortion collective known as Jane before Roe v. Wade and numerous other history-making groups. (Now 75, she’s currently organizing a campaign to support President Biden’s effort to tax billionaires.) Meanwhile Bill helped lead the 1971 Mayday antiwar protests to shut down Nixon’s Washington, founded Medical Aid for Indochina, led a relief squadron of small planes over Wounded Knee in 1973, and then ran Tom Hayden’s trail-blazing 1976 Senate campaign.
Sheila Smith, a member of the underground feminist collective Jane, was among those arrested by the Chicago police for performing abortions when they were illegal.
Lenny Foster — the courageous Navajo scout who led American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks through the militarized noose that encircled the Wounded Knee camp in 1973 — also phoned me to say he had received his copy of the book and he was “honored” to be in it. I told Lenny that I was honored to have interviewed him about his daring mission, which is the climax of our final chapter.
Lenny Foster holds the rifle (inside a beaded scabbard) he used to defend the beleaguered Wounded Knee camp.
I’m also delighted to read Peter Dale Scott’s remarks about our book on his Facebook page after he began reading By the Light of Burning Dreams, which he called my most “important” and “timely” book. I still think that my 2015 book, The Devil’s Chessboard — which examined the dark side of America during the Cold War, and how our country went gravely wrong — is equally if not more important. But the two books together — about power and the brave if flawed resistance to it — tell readers what they need to know about the “triumphs” and “tragedies” of the American epic story during our lifetimes.
PS Speaking of Peter, there’s a snapshot somewhere online of a memorable afternoon I spent with him at his Berkeley home, with his good friend Dan Ellsberg, and fellow independent historians Russ Baker and Jefferson Morley. (The picture was taken by my research partner Karen Croft, who is camera shy.) On this 50th anniversary of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, let us now praise Ellsberg and other courageous whistleblowers!
Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg defends himself outside a courthouse .