Howard Zinn

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Howard Zinn speaks at Marlboro College on February 16, 2004.
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Howard Zinn speaks at Marlboro College on February 16, 2004.
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Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American historian and political scientist, whose political philosophy incorporates ideas from Marxism, anarchism, socialism, and social democracy. Together with Noam Chomsky (with whom he has collaborated on several books and speaking engagements), Zinn is among the most well-known intellectuals of the political Left in the United States.

Author of more than fifteen books, Zinn offers a radical re-telling of United States history in his most popular work, A People's History of the United States, first published in 1980 and often updated. Zinn is also a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy, arguing that the U.S. military often commits acts of terrorism, and that since World War II "there has not been a more warlike nation in the world than the United States."1

Zinn's approach to history is, by his own admission, biased; however, he argues that historical bias is unavoidable. He tends to focus on social movements instead of politicians and magnates, suggesting that the traditional top-down approach to history leads to complacency on the part of the public.

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Biography

Zinn was brought up in a blue-collar Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. (His father was from Austria and his mother had grown up in Siberia) In his early days, he was a worker and shipyard labor organizer in the Brooklyn shipyards; he flew bombing missions in Europe during World War II, an experience that shaped his opposition to war. Zinn was a B-17 bombardier with the 490th Bomb Group, and in April, 1945 he participated in the napalm bombing of Royan, France, which was occupied by German troops. Nine years later, Zinn visited Royan, to examine documents and interview residents. He wrote an account of the bombing of Royan, which was published in his book The Politics of History and is also included in The Zinn Reader.

Zinn questions the immense number of civilian casualties that resulted from the United States bombing cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Hanoi during the U.S. war in Vietnam, and Baghdad during the U.S. war in Iraq. He makes the case against targeting civilians in his pamphlet Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence [1]. Instead of bombing civilians, he contends that the Axis powers could have been opposed during World War II through popularly organized acts of nonviolent resistance. He writes: "The term 'just war' contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people."2

Zinn does not call himself a pacifist: to him the term suggests passive — rather than active — resistance. For example, he offered the following alternative to bombing Kosovo: "I think of South Africa, where a decision to engage in out-and-out armed struggle would have led to a bloody civil war with huge casualties, most of them black. Instead, the African National Congress decided to put up with apartheid longer, but wage a long-term campaign of attrition, with strikes, sabotage, economic sanctions, and international pressure. It worked." [2]

Zinn asserts the U.S. will end its war and occupation of Iraq when resistance within the military increases, in the same way resistance within the military contributed to ending the U.S. war in Vietnam. He compares the military families who are demanding an end to the U.S. war in Iraq to the parallel "in the Confederacy in the Civil War, when the wives of soldiers rioted because their husbands were dying and the plantation owners were profiting from the sale of cotton, refusing to grow grains for civilians to eat." [3]

This is his view of how change occurs. "I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. And to look at history and understand that when change takes place it takes place as a result of large, large numbers of people doing little things unbeknownst to one another. And that history is very important for people to not get discouraged. Because if you look at history you see the way the labor movement was able to achieve things when it stuck to its guns, when it organized, when it resisted. Black people were able to change their condition when they fought back and when they organized. Same thing with the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the women's movement. History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place." 3

After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill, graduating with a B.A. in 1951 and Columbia University, where he earned an M.A. (1952) and Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science (1958). His doctoral dissertation LaGuardia in Congress was a study of Fiorello LaGuardia's congressional career. It depicts LaGuardia representing "the conscience of the twenties" as he fought for public power, the right to strike, and the redistribution of wealth by taxation. "His specific legislative program," Zinn wrote, "was an astonishingly accurate preview of the New Deal." It was published by the Cornell University Press for the American Historical Association.

In 1956, Zinn was appointed chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College (now Atlanta University Center, Spelman College) a college for black women in Atlanta, where he participated in the Civil Rights movement. Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Of his experiences at Spelman, Zinn says, "Those seven years at Spelman College are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me." [4]

Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd at Spelman and mentored young student activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. A tenured professor, Zinn was fired in June 1963 after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. A full account of Zinn's years at Spelman is contained in his autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.

In the early 1960s, Zinn wrote frequently about the historic struggle for Civil Rights, both as a participant and historian. [[5]] and in 1963–64, he took a year off from teaching to write SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique.

In 1964, he joined the faculty at Boston University where he taught history and civil liberties until 1988. He was a leading critic of the Vietnam War. Zinn's diplomatic visit to Hanoi with Rev. Daniel Berrigan during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 resulted in the return of three American airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun. Zinn remained friends [6] and allies [7] with the Berrigan brothers, Phil and Daniel over the years.

Daniel Ellsberg entrusted "The Pentagon Papers" to Zinn (and others) before they were finally published in The New York Times. Called as an expert witness in Ellsberg's criminal trial, Zinn was asked to explain to the jury the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from World War II to 1963. Zinn discussed that history for several hours and later reflected on his time before the jury. "I explained there was nothing in the papers of military significance that could be used to harm the defense of the United States, that the information in them was simply embarrassing to our government because what was revealed, in the government's own interoffice memos, was how it had lied to the American public.… The secrets disclosed in the Pentagon Papers might embarrass politicians, might hurt the profits of corporations wanting tin, rubber, oil, in far-off places. But this was not the same as hurting the nation, the people," Zinn wrote on pp 160–161 of his autobiography. Ellsberg was acquitted.

Howard Zinn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Roslyn in the United States. The couple have two children, Myla and Jeff, and five grandchildren. Roslyn is an artist and editor who has a role in editing all of Howard's books.

Zinn's autobiography is You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.A biographical documentary film of the same name was produced in 2004 and shown in select theaters. It is available[8]on DVD. The film, by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller[9]is narrated by Matt Damon; the music was composed by Richard Martinez featuring music by Billy Bragg, Woodie Guthrie, and Pearl Jam. The film includes footage of Howard and Roslyn Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker. (Edelman and Walker were students of Zinn at Spelman College.) In addition to the 78-minute film, the DVD includes these special features: On Human Nature and Aggression; his speech at Veterans for Peace Conference, 2004; and audio of his 1971 speech at the Boston Common on Civil Disobedience. In the film, Noam Chomsky says of Zinn: "He changed the consciousness of a generation."

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A People's History

Among his many books, Zinn is best known for A People's History of the United States, a detailed work presenting American history through the eyes of ordinary people struggling to improve their lives, including striking workers, Native Americans, African-American slaves, women, African-Americans struggling against racism and for Civil Rights Populists, and others whose stories are not often told. Since its publication in 1980, A People's History has been assigned reading both as a high school and college textbook, and has sold well over a million copies, becoming one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy.

When Matt Damon, his mother, and brother moved next door to the Zinns in West Newton, Massachusetts, the families became friends, and the Zinns sometimes sat with the Damon boys. After Damon became an actor, he included a reference to A People's History in his film Good Will Hunting, and read the latter half of People's History for an audiobook released February 1, 2003 (ISBN: 0060530065). People's History was also referenced in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show The Sopranos.

In the spring of 2003, to commemorate the sale of the millionth copy of A People's History, a dramatic reading from the book was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The reading featured Danny Glover, Andre Gregory, James Earl Jones, Myla Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Alfre Woodard, Harris Yulin, Jeff Zinn, Producing Artistic Director of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater [10], and Howard Zinn as narrator. [11] The result was published as The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known.

In 2004 Zinn published Voices of A People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove. Voices expands on the concept and provides a large collection of dissident voices in long form. The book is intended as a companion to A People's History and parallels its structure.

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Playwright

Zinn has written three plays. His most recent is Marx in Soho, a play on history, that has been continuously performed [12]to encouraging reviews[13] [14]in small theaters throughout the United States, with Brian Jones in the title role starting in 1999 through 2005. In February 2005, Bob Weick took on the role in a travelling tour. More information on the travelling tour is available from Iron Age Theatre

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Published works

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Books

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Forewords and introductions

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Compact discs

  • A People's History of the United States (1999)
  • Artists in the Time of War (2002)
  • Heroes & Martyrs: Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, and the Revolutionary Struggle (2000)
  • Stories Hollywood Never Tells (2000)
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Notes

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External links

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Online interviews and video


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Links to criticism of Howard Zinn

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