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<a href="http://gawker.com/5458465/howard-zinn-radical-historian" eudora="autourl">
http://gawker.com/5458465/howard-zinn-radical-historian<br><br>
</a><a href="http://gawker.com/tag/howardzinn/">Howard Zinn</a>,
historian and author of <i>A People's History of the United States</i>,
<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html">
has died of a heart attack.</a> He was 87.<br><br>
Zinn was born in New York and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yards and
served as a bombardier in World War II. He attended school on the GI
bill, was active in the civil rights movement, and protested
Vietnam.<br><br>
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<dl>
<dd>On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he
could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture
to come along. A hundred did so.<br><br>
</dl>A People's History</i> should be required reading for every high
school student in the nation. Zinn is survived by his daughter, his son,
and five grandchildren.<br><br>
<h1><b>
<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html">
Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at
87</a></b></h1>
<img src="http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/icon_blue_email.gif" width=15 height=11 alt="Email">
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E-mail|<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html">
Link</a> January 27, 2010 05:40 PM <br><br>
By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff<br><br>
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who
was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty
critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa
Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was
87.<br><br>
"His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and
helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our
lives," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once
wrote of Dr. Zinn. "When action has been called for, one could
always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and
trustworthy guide."<br><br>
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand
of history he taught. Dr. Zinn's best-known book, "A People's
History of the United States" (1980), had for its heroes not the
Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the
status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers
of Shays' Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.<br><br>
As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving
Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my
own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted
more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just
better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence,
more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it.
This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."<br><br>
Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and Silber. Dr.
Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in
turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and
cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of
academe." <br><br>
Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors
walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues
were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a
picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU
Five" were soon dropped, however.<br><br>
Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish
immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a
housewife. He attended New York public schools and worked in the Brooklyn
Navy Yard before joining the Army Air Force during World War II. Serving
as a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force, he won the Air Medal and
attained the rank of second lieutenant. <br><br>
After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering
New York University as a 27-year-old freshman on the GI Bill. Professor
Zinn, who had married Roslyn Shechter in 1944, worked nights in a
warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his
bachelor's degree from NYU, followed by master's and doctoral degrees in
history from Columbia University. <br><br>
Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn
College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in
1956. He served at the historically black women's institution as chairman
of the history department. Among his students were the novelist Alice
Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and
Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.
<br><br>
During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He
served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and
participated in numerous demonstrations. <br><br>
Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964
and was named full professor in 1966. <br><br>
The focus of his activism now became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at
countless rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and
another leading antiwar activist, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, went to Hanoi in
1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.
<br><br>
Dr. Zinn's involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two
books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and
"Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously
published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the
American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC:
The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique"
(1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966). <br>
Dr. Zinn was also the author of "The Politics of History"
(1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday
Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).
<br><br>
In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement so as to concentrate on speaking
and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn
had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma
Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus." <br><br>
Dr. Zinn, or his writing, made a cameo appearance in the 1997 film
"Good Will Hunting." The title characters, played by Matt
Damon, lauds "A People's History" and urges Robin Williams's
character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of
the Zinns growing up. <br><br>
Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The
People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009. Damon was
the narrator of a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You
Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."<br><br>
On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could
join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to
come along. A hundred did so. <br><br>
Dr. Zinn's wife died in 2008. He leaves a daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of
Lexington; a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaugthers; and two
grandsons.<br><br>
Funeral plans were not available.<br><br>
<br><br>
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