Howard Zinn

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 figures of the political Left in the United States.

Biography

Zinn was brought up in a blue-collar immigrant family in Brooklyn. 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.

Related Topics:
Blue-collar - World War II - B-17 - Bombardier - 1945 - Napalm - Royan - France

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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 http://cps-www.bu.edu/~amaral/Personal/zinn.html. 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."{{fn|2}}

Related Topics:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Nonviolent resistance - Just war

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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." http://www.progressive.org/zinn9905.htm

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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." http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=20715

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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." {{fn|3}}

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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.

Related Topics:
New York University - GI Bill - 1951 - Columbia University - 1952 - 1958 - Fiorello LaGuardia - New Deal

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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." http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Zinn/zinn-con2.html

Related Topics:
1956 - Spelman College - Atlanta - Civil Rights movement - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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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.

Related Topics:
Staughton Lynd - Alice Walker - Marian Wright Edelman - 1963 - The Nation

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

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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 http://www.progressive.org/feb03/zinn0203.html and allies http://secure.progressive.org/mpzinnjan98.htm with the Berrigan brothers, Phil and Daniel over the years.

Related Topics:
Boston University - Vietnam War

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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.

Related Topics:
Daniel Ellsberg - The Pentagon Papers - The New York Times

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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.

Related Topics:
Boston University - Thomas Merton - Eugene V. Debs - Upton Sinclair - Lannan Literary Award - Newton, Massachusetts

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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 availablehttp://firstrunfeatures.com/on DVD. The film, by Deb Ellis and Denis Muellerhttp://firstrunfeatures.com/product418.htmlis 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."

Related Topics:
Deb Ellis - Denis Mueller - Richard Martinez - Billy Bragg - Woodie Guthrie - Pearl Jam - Noam Chomsky - Marian Wright Edelman - Daniel Ellsberg - Tom Hayden - Alice Walker

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