Howard Zinn died on Jan. 27, 2010 — the same day as author J.D. Salinger. Due to Salinger's more eye−catching legacy, Zinn's obituary was pushed back in The New York Times — all the way to the Business section. For a man who spent most of his adult life criticizing capitalism and forcing people to rethink their beliefs about the way the country runs, it was ironic to see his obituary next to news of big business, but not surprising to those who knew anything about Zinn.
Zinn was a historian, a teacher and an activist, best known for his book "A People's History of the United States," (1980), which told the story of the United States through the eyes of the disenfranchised.
"What Zinn did was create a purposeful deliberate shift in emphasis," Ian Greaves (LA '08), a Tufts graduate student and teaching assistant in history, said. "Previously, it was as if there was a right way of doing history — to tell the main story and then accompany and criticize the main story with alternative perspectives. He made the alternative perspectives the main story."
Zinn's book caused generations of students to re−think the figures they knew so well, changing a history full of great men to a story of struggle — a history in which people like Theodore Roosevelt are heroes was rewritten to show their racist and sexist sides.
"You feel radical and even a little naughty [reading it]," Leah Knobler (LA '05), who taught "A People's History" as a textbook to high school students in New York City, said. "Really, he's saying this about the founding fathers? It goes against the whole program and that's what makes it so engaging. You feel a little subversive at first but then you see that this is the story. This is what they're trying to keep from us and that's what keeps the status quo."
While best known for "A People's History," Zinn wrote many other works, including plays about Karl Marx and Emma Goldman and a landmark history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The greatest criticisms of Zinn's work attack his alleged bias, calling his works radical revisionist liberal propaganda.
However, Zinn never pretended to be neutral and constantly assured audiences of his biases. He titled his 1994 autobiography "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train," emphasizing that there is no such thing as neutrality in a world that is always changing and always asking people to choose sides.
"What Zinn was doing was simply complicating the story," Greaves said. "[He made] it more difficult to say, ‘This is what happened.' There's no way to dismiss Zinn wholesale. He says it right up front: If you don't like this history that I'm writing, then you are essentially saying that the stories of black Americans, women, native Americans, immigrants, migrant workers, anyone who has been systematically shut out of the halls of power, if you dismiss me, you're saying that those groups of people deserve their status."
Zinn's writings stemmed from his own experiences: serving in World War II and going to New York University on the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 and later teaching at the historically black Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. until he was fired for his radical leanings. He then held an extended tenure at Boston University. One of his great emphases was on education and the power of a motivated student body.
"I think he was always so aware that he was a white man and had privilege too and wanted to use his basic privilege to educate," Knobler said.
"Zinn talked a lot about the distinct power of students," said Hannah Forrester, a student at Barnard College and member of the International Socialist Organization, with which Zinn sometimes collaborated. "It largely depends on the school, but students are generally quicker to organize. It's less scary than, for example, [it is for] a mom and dad to organize; there's less danger."
No matter the danger that lay ahead of him, Zinn was known until the end as the premier activist historian, and he encouraged activism in every realm of American life and in every group of people. Joshua Savala, a Tufts graduate student in history, presented an oral history of American labor to a union of University of California workers, drawing largely on Zinn's writings.
"I used Zinn to show the connections between immigration and labor, a connection that's complicated things for a long time," he said. "I think placing what [union laborers] are doing today in a broader historical context, saying this is where we're situated historically, socially, economically, is part of a broad process of changing things."
Although Zinn explored a highly complicated history of the United States, one that might seem impossible to overcome, he always spoke of hope, of the possibilities of activism and the knowledge that in solidarity and action comes change. While he was highly critical of President Barack Obama, he saw promise in the grassroots organizing that elected him.
"Really for the first time, a lot of people were seeing their political convictions align with official mainstream politics," Forrester said. "That was a really big moment, but now people are realizing everything they've invested in Obama, he's been tossing it away. By and large, it is really frustrating and demoralizing. But as Zinn said, it's not who's sitting in office but who's sitting in — it's not coming from one great individual in the Oval Office but by who's radicalizing."
"Zinn was an example of an academic that lived his politics, which is the way it should be," Savala said. "In that sense it's also something to look to today, of actively organizing and of attempting to create radically different relationships with the people around you."
This belief was exemplified in Zinn's last published writing for The Nation, in which he appraised Obama's achievements after one year. He used his contribution as a call to arms to encourage people to remember the fierce urgency they felt in electing Obama and to use it to hold his administration accountable.
"I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric," he wrote, "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."
"The movement that got Obama into office is a reason for excitement because it's a genuine expanding movement among young voters to get some modicum of political consciousness," Greaves said. "If you're just going put the right dude in the system, you're saying the system is good enough. It's not about putting the right people in office, but about that consciousness, the viral spread of ideas about what's wrong, what's inadequate. Not everyone needs to be angry, but you do need to be critical, because that's the wellspring of revolution."
