(NAME-MCE) Howard Zinn Dead, Author Of 'People's History Of The United States' Died At 87

[Bill Howe]

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/howard-zinn-dead-author-o_n_439350.html?view=screen>
Howard Zinn Dead, Author Of 'People's History Of The United States' Died At
87<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/howard-zinn-dead-author-o_n_439350.html>Howard
Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's
History of the United States" became a million-selling alternative to
mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and
Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla
Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A
People's History" was – fittingly – a people's best-seller, attracting a
wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003.
Although Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in
high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion
editions were published, including "Voices of a People's History," a volume
for young people and a graphic novel

"I can't think of anyone who had such a powerful and benign influence," said
the linguist and fellow activist Noam Chomsky, a close friend of Zinn's.
"His historical work changed the way millions of people saw the past."

At a time when few politicians dared even call themselves liberal, "A
People's History" told an openly left-wing story. Zinn charged Christopher
Columbus and other explorers with genocide, picked apart presidents from
Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists
and war resisters.

Even liberal historians were uneasy with Zinn. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
once said: "I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don't
take him very seriously. He's a polemicist, not a historian."

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Zinn acknowledged he was not
trying to write an objective history, or a complete one. He called his book
a response to traditional works, the first chapter – not the last – of a new
kind of history.

"There's no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete," Zinn
said. "My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand
times."

"A People's History" had some famous admirers, including Matt Damon and
Affleck. The two grew up near Zinn, were family friends and gave the book a
plug in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for "Good Will Hunting." When
Affleck nearly married Jennifer Lopez, Zinn was on the guest list.

"He taught me how valuable – how necessary dissent was to democracy and to
America itself," Affleck said in a statement. "He taught that history was
made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him
personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him – and try to
impart it to my own children – in his memory."

Oliver Stone was a fan, as well as Springsteen, whose bleak "Nebraska" album
was inspired in part by "A People's History." The book was the basis of a
2007 documentary, "Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind," and even showed
up on "The Sopranos," in the hand of Tony's son, A.J.

Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair.
An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more
interested in persuasion than in confrontation.

Born in New York in 1922, Zinn was the son of Jewish immigrants who as a
child lived in a rundown area in Brooklyn and responded strongly to the
novels of Charles Dickens. At age 17, urged on by some young Communists in
his neighborhood, he attended a political rally in Times Square.

"Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the
policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people. I couldn't
believe that," he told the AP.

"And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke
up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie,
dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant. ... It
was a very shocking lesson for me."

War continued his education. Eager to help wipe out the Nazis, Zinn joined
the Army Air Corps in 1943 and even persuaded the local draft board to let
him mail his own induction notice. He flew missions throughout Europe,
receiving an Air Medal, but he found himself questioning what it all meant.
Back home, he gathered his medals and papers, put them in a folder and wrote
on top: "Never again."

He attended New York University and Columbia University, where he received a
doctorate in history. In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the
history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black
women's school in then-segregated Atlanta.

During the civil rights movement, Zinn encouraged his students to request
books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at
downtown cafeterias. Zinn also published several articles, including a
then-rare attack on the Kennedy administration for being too slow to protect
blacks.

He was loved by students – among them a young Alice Walker, who later wrote
"The Color Purple" – but not by administrators. In 1963, Spelman fired him
for "insubordination." (Zinn was a critic of the school's non-participation
in the civil rights movement.) His years at Boston University were marked by
opposition to the Vietnam War and by feuds with the school's president, John
Silber.

Zinn retired in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with
students in support of an on-campus nurses' strike. Over the years, he
continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket
lines.

"The happy thing about Howard was that in the last years he could gain
satisfaction that his contributions were so impressive and recognized,"
Chomsky said. "He could hardly keep up with all the speaking invitations."

Besides "A People's History," Zinn wrote several books, including "The
Southern Mystique," "LaGuardia in Congress" and the memoir, "You Can't Be
Neutral on a Moving Train," the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn that
Damon narrated. He also wrote three plays.

One of Zinn's last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in
The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration.

"I've been searching hard for a highlight," he wrote, adding that he wasn't
disappointed because he never expected a lot from Obama.

"I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to
begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president – which
means, in our time, a dangerous president – unless there is some national
movement to push him in a better direction."

Zinn's longtime wife and collaborator, Roslyn, died in 2008. They had two
children, Myla and Jeff.

___

Associated Press Writer Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report from
Boston.



Bill Howe
Personal Website -   http://www.billhowe.org
Travel Blog -  http://billhowe.org/BillBlog/
Multicultural Dimensions - http://www.multiculturaldimensions.org
Multicultural Education Blog - http://billhowe.org/MCE/
Asian Pacific American Coalition of Connecticut (APAC)-
http://www.apacct.org/

Travel to China and Hong Kong July 10-24, 2010
- http://www.billhowe.org/China2010.htm

Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than
believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive:
forget. Do more than dream: work.~ William Arthur Ward