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Remembering Howard Zinn

Last Wednesday January 27th, American progressives lost a hero – Howard Zinn, who pioneered a genre of history called People’s History – stories of our nation’s past told from the perspective of ordinary people, poor people, women, people of color, and others. His seminal book A People’s History of the United States, which sold well over a million copies, influenced countless people and spawned hundreds of historians to write similar “people’s histories.” Zinn died unexpectedly at the age of 87 of a heart attack while traveling through Santa Monica right here in Southern California. Within the first 24 hours of his death, mainstream media began quoting right wing detractors like Arthur Schlesinger who told the Associated Press about Howard Zinn, “I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.” NPR interviewed the rightwing author David Horowitz who said “There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect… Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.” But no critic of Zinn’s work has been able to refute the truth of the history he recounted – how bottom-up rebellions, labor revolts, protests, sit-ins, and political organizing were responsible for most of the major positive changes in the United States; how wars were fought by powerful men over their interests while the ultimate price was paid by ordinary people. When asked how he would like to be remembered, Howard Zinn said “I want to be remembered as somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power they didn’t have before.”

Thank you Gifts:

The People Speak – DVD – $120
Holy Wars – speech by Howard Zinn on 11/11/09 at Boston University – $80

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