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January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Zinn__1264635536_4226Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard in the Boston Globe:

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."

Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement."

For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, 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 union organizers of the 1930s.

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."

Posted by Robin Varghese at 11:01 PM | Permalink

Comments

A great loss, as History written for the proletariat is silenced, and the elite have less to fear.
A voice of the people is gone.

Posted by: Dave Ranning | Jan 27, 2010 11:38:25 PM

A heroic man. His voice remains with us through his work.

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Jan 27, 2010 11:43:27 PM

A great loss indeed. I quote a passage from his remarkable A People's History of the United States:

... in telling the history of the United States ... we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities [pretending to a common interest] and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people ... not to be on the side of executioners.

Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of Philippines as seen by the black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by the socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by the peons in Latin America ... to the limited extent that any one person ... can 'see' history from the standpoint of others.

My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate ... turn on other victims ... as they are jammed together into the boxcars of the system ...

Posted by: Namit | Jan 28, 2010 12:10:49 AM

A truly great man. A truly sad day of loss. Makes one even more grateful for still having Chomsky.

Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jan 28, 2010 4:19:39 AM

I'm grateful for having Chomsky, but I would be even more grateful if he would question the official myth of the events of 9/11.

Posted by: J.H. | Jan 28, 2010 10:21:27 AM

Why would you assume he hadn't?

Posted by: Carlos | Jan 28, 2010 10:42:27 AM

http://www.wordsforgood.org/mirrors/educate-yourself.org/cn/noamchomskygatekeepersofleft1part04oct07.shtml

Posted by: J.H. | Jan 28, 2010 11:04:07 AM

RIP Dr.Zinn.

Posted by: ESTEBAN AGOSTO REID | Jan 28, 2010 11:08:43 AM

He lived to eighty-seven, and that's a long life. I am thinking now of the Epicurus quote that Dave Ranning recently posted.

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Jan 28, 2010 12:08:44 PM

It appears that he has, then, but that he does not agree with you. I understand how gratifying it would be if he took your position, though, which I guess is more what you mean. What I’ve been struck by recently is how many hard-righties I seem to be running into recently that share your views on this, so you’ve got that going for you.

Posted by: Carlos | Jan 28, 2010 12:10:27 PM

I would be suicidally depressed if Chomsky ever joined the conspiracy theorists. Thankfully, he remains superbly sane.

Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jan 28, 2010 12:12:56 PM

I am thinking now of the Epicurus quote...

And he was hale enough to travel right to the end- and still at the top of his game, having just had a documentary air and a Moyers interview. Something to be said for a sudden departure and always leave 'em wanting more.

Posted by: Carlos | Jan 28, 2010 12:15:00 PM

Open minded people are willing to question their most dearly held assumptions. Here are 40 reasons to doubt the government's position. Now I'll go back to my raving.

http://911truth.org/article.php?story=20041221155307646

Posted by: J.Hawkins | Jan 28, 2010 12:26:07 PM

Appropriately:

Zinn on 911

Posted by: Carlos | Jan 28, 2010 12:59:49 PM

Carlos,

Excellent video. Thanks. When Zinn says "Do I believe the government was in on 9/11? I don't know. I don't care. That's the past" I think that is totally unacceptable and disgraceful. Thanks Carlos.

Posted by: J.Hawkins | Jan 28, 2010 1:28:28 PM

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