Howard Zinn Equality

With the issue of dealing with the community as a whole and whether or not the individual is central to progress should also bring up the matter of equality. For the topic of equality Howard Zinn and Mary Beth Norton are the authors to look at specifically because of the fact that they wrote from the standpoint that most writers don’t consider; the lesser of the ranks. Howard Zinn describes the rebellions against Britain which required the Americas to develop a military; the issue with this military at first is that it only allows “hallmarks of respectability or at least of full citizenship in their communities. Excluded from the militia were friendly Indians, free negroes, white servants, and free white men who had no stable home” (Zinn, p.61). In Zinn’s …show more content…
That’s when the Bill of Rights was created; however, even though most men were defended under this new contract the group excluded again at this time were women. Mary Beth Norton does a great job with her essay Liberties Daughter by describing how the political significance of women’s roles shifted during the mid-1750. The political activists of female patriots were especially helpful in boycotts against tea and other items. Norton states “the chosen tactics could succeed only if white housewives and their daughters refused to purchase imported goods” (Norton, p.155). With all of the additional help at home the women were giving the men at war it’s astounding that the male counterparts were just beginning to see the value of women. Just as in Zinn’s essay we can see that what had started out as social injustice and inequality; for not only different races, but also different genders, ended up with the greater of society coming to a better understanding that to get results you are going to need to enlist the help of those that differ from your social status and