Legendary historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn likely died just the way he would have wanted — from a heart bursting of love and revolutionary spirit while on a speaking tour highlighting the voices of uncommon heroes in American history.
Zinn, 87, passed away from a heart attack while in Santa Monica, Calif., just days before a planned a performance at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. He lived in Auburndale, Mass., and was a professor emeritus of Political Science Department at Boston University.
"The People Speak," a dramatic musical performance of letters, diaries and speeches by everyday Americans throughout history, was Zinn’s latest project. His book, A People’s History of the United States, has sold more than one million copies since published in 1980 and has become a text routinely used in classrooms across the country.Born in Brooklyn in 1922 to Jewish immigrant parents who were factory workers with a limited education, Zinn said that he was introduced to literature when he received the collected works of Charles Dickens through a 25-cents coupon offer through the New York Post.
When 17 years old, at he urging of young Communists in the neighborhood attended his first politically 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 … and then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious,” he told the Associated Press.
Zinn’s fiercely antiwar activism was rooted in his experience as a pilot during World War II after he participated in the bombing of Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Returning from war, he attended New York University on the GI Bill and received his PhD in history from Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation focused on the congressional career of Fiorello LaGuardia, in which he argued that LaGuardia represented “the conscience of the twenties” as he fought for public power, the right to strike and a redistribution of wealth through taxation.
While teaching at Atlanta’s Spelman College in the 1950s, Zinn participated in civil rights campaigns to protest segregation policies. One of his young students at the time was writer Alice Walker. Although tenured, he was dismissed in 1963 due to his support of female student’s participation in direct action against the segregation of public places in Atlanta.Throughout his tenure as an academic and writer, Zinn testified as an expert witness at several historic trials, including that of Daniel Ellsberg and the Camden 28. He was a vocal critic the wars of the last 50 years, including Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. His 1967 book, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (Beacon Press), was the first book to call for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops with no conditions.
He received a lifetime worth of awards, and most recently was recently awarded the 2010 New York University Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award on Jan. 21.
If Zinn had lived another day, he certainly would have immediately expressed criticism of President Obama’s State of the Union address. “I’ve been searching hard for a highlight,” Zinn wrote in The Nation Jan. 21 about the first year of the Obama administration. “I don’t see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies. … 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.”
Comments
Dr. Zinn was an unreconstructed, unaplogetic Marxist, as he oftern proudly proclaimed.. This "heart bursiting with love" is utter nonsense. He plainly hated the U.S. and its people, yet never found any other place he would prefer to live. His main acolytes are intellectual lightweights like Matt Damon and his fellow Marxist academics. May he rest in peace, yet may he also be held accountable for fostering generations of Americans trained to hate their own country while ignoring its many contributions to humanity's improvement..
I first heard Howard Zinn speak in 1965, when I was 10 years old and my parents took me to an antiwar rally in Washington. (My sixth-grade teacher was also there, and told me not to tell anyone, or he'd lose his job.)
His writings since then were clear, impassioned, and inspiring to generations of American radicals. His histories unveiled much that was obscure in our country's rich legacy of political action.
Howard Zinn believed that America should live up to its promise as a place of freedom and justice for ALL of its people. What he hated was the American nightmare of racism, militarism, and exploitation and domination by the rich.
Uncle Ed--If you're going to call people "intellectual lightweights," you might want to check your spelling first, so you don't look as semiliterate as the typical right-wing troll.
I think Marxists have more worthwhile to say these days about the economic mess we're in and how we got there than tea-baggers like Uncle Ed.
Zinn taught us to distrust established authority and to look to the power of ordinary people to overcome injustice through collective action. What's wrong with that? He believed more in this country than reactionaries like Uncle Ed could ever imagine and inspired millions to take action to create a better world. Read this article ("Finishing School for Pickets") Zinn wrote in The Nation in 1960 about the flowering of the Civil Rights movement at a Black all-women's college in Atlanta:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/19600806/zinn/3
Zinn's twinkling wit and sensitivity to people's lived experiences and their ability to make history informs this article. Funny thing, the young women in this article who were going to jail for challenging segregation 50 years ago were baited for being "anti-American". Some things never change.
Zinn lived in Auburndale, MA, one of the villages of Newton, MA. The median household income of Newton in 2007 was $110,000, compared to about $50,000 for the entire USA. The 2000 Census found Newton to be 88 percent White and 1.97 percent Black.
A man of the people, if the people were affluent and White.
According to Yahoo Real Estate, Zinn's home on Fern St, Auburndale, MA is worth an estimated $709,000-$733,000. The median price of a house in the northeastern US is about $233,000. Capitalism was bery, bery good to Zinn. (Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins published Zinn's most popular book.)
Arguing with leftists means you never have to deal with actual arguments, you need only endure their juvenile name-calling (see comments, above). The sad fact is Zinn's "People's History" book was the only work of "scholarship" he ever cranked out and it sold in part because naive high school history teachers and other academic deep-thinkers forced their students to buy it (an apt analog to Zinn's love for authoritarianism). Poor Dr. Zinn went to his grave unable to account for why all these Americans (those of color too) never saw their country as he did. He could never explain why there had been no revolution, no wholesale rejection of the American Dream and its underlying principles. No, wait, he did. He said we're all just too darn stupid to comprehend -- a similar line President Obama is using to explain his own failure to secure his health care "reform" legislation. RIP, Mr. Zinn.
Uncle Dread, your fear of the best contructive criticism found throughout Zinn's teachings is fast becoming the minority emotion. If your an honest person, you'll want to hear the stories of peoples who have been violated, Especially if your own government is responsible. Show some responsibility and don't hold on so tight to Your ideas.
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