Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Yesterday, Howard Zinn suffered a heart attack and died at age 87.

Zinn, a longtime professor at Boston University, was known for his left-wing politics. Born in New York, Zinn served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, where he became a second lieutenant. He attended New York University on the GI bill after the war, enrolling as a 27-year-old freshman; he did his postgraduate work at Columbia. As a young professor, he became a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War.

He published books on the Vietnam War, as well as other books on history and American society. But it was his 1980 book "A People's History of the United States" and its follow-up, "Voices of a People's History of the United States," that made him required reading. Literally -- "A People's History of the United States" presented American history from alternative perspectives, including native peoples, slaves, disenfranchised workers, farmers and women.

Zinn was a multi-award winning author having won the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the Upton Sinclair Award.

He worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and in 1964 authored a book about the organization entitled SNCC: The New Abolitionists. As a teacher at Spellman College for seven years, Zinn mentored many students, one of which was Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple.

The aforementioned People's History of the United States was a milestone book. The history of the United States written from a different perspective.

Howard Zinn: It really started way back... I wrote A People's History with the idea of bypassing and ignoring the usual from-the-top-down treatment of American history. I wanted not to see American history from the viewpoint of people in authority -- presidents and congressmen, generals and so on. I wanted to see American history from the standpoint of people who had been ommitted from textbooks.

I wrote the book in the late 1970s, and it came out of the movmenets of the 60s and 70s and my participation in those movements. I had spent years in the South involved in the civil rights movement and I was very conscious when I was there -- I was teaching at a black college in Atlanta, Spellman College, and I was going around with SNICK (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). And as I was going around participating in various things, whether in Atlanta, or demonstrations in Albany, Georgia, or Selma, Alabama, or various towns in Mississippi, I was very much aware that all sorts of very fascinating things were going on. Fascinating figures were on the scene. And none of this was going to be reported in the mainstream media, because the mainstream media is only interested in big events and big people -- even with movements they conventrate on the big events and big people.

His autobiography written in 1994 is entitled You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.

Zinn was a great thinker, activist, and author. He stayed attuned to politics and culture even in his later years. Upon Obama's election, Zinn had this to say:

...With his foreign policy, unfortunately, he shows no signs of departing from the traditional militarism of the Democratic and Republican parties. The idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan is disastrous, really absurd. I mean, almost as soon as he came into office he sent missiles into Pakistan. Civilians were killed. The whole tone of foreign policy, adding more soldiers, leaving 50,000 in Iraq even after withdrawing them in 16 months, all of this is very bad. And, therefore, he's going to need a great big push -- protest, really. He's going to need demonstrations and protest and letters and petitions. He's going to have to face the kind of agitation that Roosevelt faced when he came into office.

With the passing of Howard Zinn, we have unfortunately lost one more agitator.

R.I.P.