This is History From The Gutter Up

“A Renegade History goes deeper. It goes beneath what the new “social history” portrayed as the bottom. It tells the story of “bad” Americans — drunkards, prostitutes, “shiftless” slaves and white slackers, criminals, juvenile delinquents, brazen homosexuals, and others who operated beneath American society — and shows how they shaped our world, created new pleasures, and expanded our freedoms. This is history from the gutter up.” – Thaddeus Russell

History was originally about great men. Heroic against evil. Leaders against leaders. A small group of influential leaders with massive influence that shaped the world we live in today. Then history changed. Academics realized that great men made for easy stories, but not a more truthful account of the things that shape society.

Academics in the 60’s and 70’s started to tell stories about great movements instead of great men. Stories of mass political and social movements captured something exciting. Many people joining together to make their voices heard, and to change the course of history. And these mass movements no doubt resulted in change. This history was told as history from “the bottom up”. But it was still a story about social and political movements. Not exactly the bottom.

There is a group missing from almost all accounts of history. The low life’s, that ignore the rules of society, act for their own pleasure, and in many ways create a lot of the social freedoms we enjoy today. In A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell tells history “from the gutter up”.

It is a story of freedom that is not about permission granted from politicians, or freedom created by massive protests, but instead liberties gained by people shamlessly doing what they want to do. Prostitutes ready to serve any customer, regardless of skin colour, low class taverns becoming the first integrated public spaces in the country. And many of the people we recognize as hero’s of these mass social movements, being actively opposed to many aspects of their own cultures.

You can see a version of this societal change in progress around the U.S. with the cannabis movement. You can look to Washigton state and say that a referrendum allowed people to freely smoke cannabis. Or you can look to the lobbying effort and political legalization movement, and say that the people active in that movement created the freedom. The largely forgotten, but crucially important group are the ones who didn’t care to lobby government, or convince a majority of the state, but years ago simply started shamelessly smoking weed because that is what they wanted to do.

History from the gutter up is scary for people in positions of power. It is a history of societal change that largely ignores them. It creates an avenue for future social change that is not depent on winning political power, but instead offers anyone the opportunity to begin social change by simply doing what they want to do no matter what social norms, and puritan ideals they may be offending.