Howard Zinn is one of the most polarizing figures in American academia

as a bombardier “gave him an interest in history, but, as his book shows, little talent for it.” To

further the ad hominem attack on Zinn and his book, the reviewer noted, “There is not much

logic in The Logic of Withdrawal.” Regardless, of what the Times Literary Supplement thought

of Zinn and his work, the book elicited a number of positive responses from U.S. Senators and

many of Zinn’s students.²³

1968 proved to be a tumultuous year, not just for the United States, but for Zinn as an

antiwar activist. In early 1968, he was asked by revolutionary pacifist David Dellinger to be part

of a peace delegation to Vietnam alongside antiwar activist Father Daniel Berrigan. They stayed

a week in Hanoi, then returned to the States bringing back three prisoners of war.²⁴ That year

Zinn also published his sixth book, Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and

Order. The short book was a response to Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas’s book Concerning

Dissent and Civil Disobedience which justified Fortas’s position on prosecuting one David

O’Brien who claimed that burning his draft card was an act of free speech. Zinn’s book was

dedicated to an individual he had never met: Peter Irons, an inmate at the Federal Correctional

Institute at Danbury Prison, Connecticut, serving three years for refusing induction into the military in 1963.²⁵ Disobedience and Democracy sold over 70,000 copies and is considered by some to be a very important work of Zinn’s due to its contribution to the antiwar movement.²⁶

With opposition to the Vietnam War mounting, Howard made notable appearances at the professional conferences for both the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the American Historical Association (AHA). At the APSA meeting in September 1969, Zinn delivered a paper entitled “Vacating the Premises in Vietnam.” His appearance was part of a debate about the U.S. role in Vietnam.²⁷ Three months later, Zinn joined his former Spelman colleague Staughton Lynd as part of the “radical caucus” at the annual conference of the AHA to pass a resolution condemning the Vietnam War. As news that a resolution opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam spread, the normally dry business meeting, usually only attended by a few hundred, was packed with over 2,000 in attendance. Compared with the resolution against the war in Iraq presented in Atlanta at the 2007 AHA convention, as Lynd himself noted, the 1969 resolution was more demanding. In no uncertain terms, the resolution, introduced by Zinn, demanded not just a withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam, but an end to the harassment of the black panther party and a release of all political prisoners (such as the Chicago eight). To no surprise, the resolution was hotly debated. Many members, while opposed to the war in Vietnam, did not want to commit the profession as a whole to adopt a view of the war believing this would “politicize” the profession. In light of this, an alternative resolution was introduced with softer language.

Though the second resolution left out any mention of the Black Panthers or other “political prisoners,” as Zinn recalled it at a talk at Reeds College thirty years later, in essence, the resolution said historians should oppose the war, “because the money that’s going for the war could otherwise be used to advance the profession of history.”²⁸ The toned down resolution met opposition on several grounds. Some argued that not voting for it would signal that they supported the Vietnam War, when their opposition was to the politicizing of the profession; therefore, voting against it would “violate the ethics of historians. . . .” Others argued for the inclusion of the Panthers in the resolution, because “repression abroad is no more important than repression at home.” As arguments flung back and forth, one Richard Wade put forth the proposal that the resolution be mailed out and voted on by the entire body of the AHA, due to the deep divisions the debate had showed. That motion was defeated by a show of hands.²⁹ Finally, a vote took place in the early morning hours of December 29, 1969. First was the alternative resolution: it was narrowly defeated, 611 – 647. Finally, came the resolution put forth by Howard Zinn and the radical caucus. That motion too, was defeated, only by a much wider margin, 493 to 822. The radical caucus would suffer another defeat at the convention when Staughton Lynd, the alternative candidate for president of the association, was defeated by a standing vote of 1,040 to 396, in favor of Yale Historian, Robert Palmer.³⁰

Throughout the two days, Zinn had been to the microphone to speak on several occasions. But at one point, when Zinn went to the microphone to speak once again, the East Asian Historian John Fairbank, Zinn’s mentor at Harvard, feeling Zinn had spoken his share, took it upon himself to stop Zinn. Fairbank put his hand on Zinn’s shoulder, whispered in his ear, and “pulled the mike. . .with the genial ferocity of Teddy Roosevelt. . . .” It was Staughton Lynd’s most visible memory of the entire conference, as he was just ten feet away when Fairbank grabbed the mike. In a letter exchange between Fairbank and Zinn in the AHA’s newsletter, Fairbank would justify his actions, noting that “Speaking is a privilege more than a right. If a right, it would have to be pro-rated, and you had already spoken more than your pro-rated share.” Regarding the resolution, Fairbank believed it would have passed had Zinn presented it at an “ad hoc meeting” and not at the official business meeting, thus, politicizing the issue or, “getting AHA officially to take a position on a public policy issue of concern to us all as citizens but not of concern primarily to us as historians.” Zinn would later compare the brief struggle for the mike to the Spanish-American War, considering himself Spain, the mike, Cuba, and Fairbank analogous to the United States. Though Zinn disagreed with Fairbank’s “unilateral decision” that Zinn had spoken too much, Zinn was much more concerned over the role of historians in taking a stand as a profession.³¹ In essence, the debates at the 1969 AHA convention, and the exchange of letters between Fairbank and Zinn, would foreshadow Howard’s next major work blending activism with academia: The Politics of History.

The Politics of History was Zinn’s vision and philosophy as a new left historian. From the preface alone, one gets the sense that, like much of his previous work, The Politics of History is as much a work of activism as it is a work of history. The two underlying questions of Zinn’s book combine the world of the scholar and activist perfectly:

“. . .[I]n a world where children are still not safe from starvation or

bombs, should not the historian thrust himself and his writing into history,

on behalf of goals in which he deeply believes? Are we historians not

humans first, and scholars because of that?”³²

The Politics of History is divided into three sections: approaches, essays, and theory.

Sections one and three are concerned with the writing of history, whereas section two is Zinn’s

attempt to demonstrate his theories through historical essays. Though Zinn is considered to be a

“revisionist” historian, his ideas presented in this volume go beyond revisionism. For example,

the classicist Victor Davis Hanson–an open critic of Howard Zinn–was critical of his peers for

publishing too many papers and disliked doctoral dissertations. In the opening pages of The

Politics of History, Zinn attacks the profession for its multitude of books and papers. But while

Davis saw this as a drain on studying Greek knowledge, Zinn saw this as a drain on fighting against injustice: “We publish while others perish.”³³ John Lewis Gaddis, a post revisionist historian, and a favorite of the Bush administration, would also appear to be anathema to Zinn’s radicalism. However, concerning history as a science, the two hold very similar views. In his book The Landscape of History, Gaddis emphasized scientific inquiry in examining historical problems.³⁴ In The Politics of History Zinn too emphasized scientific inquiry, but stressed that being scientific did not mean that we had to be neutral. Science accepted long ago that its core value was to save life: “. . .[A] physiologist would be astonished if someone suggested that he starts from a neutral position as regards life or death, health or sickness.”³⁵ To summarize, Zinn’s intent in the first section of Politics is to establish his views of how history should be taught: emotionally if need be, but never objectively, if by “objective” history is to remain neutral. In fact, the historian cannot choose to be neutral: “he writes on a moving train.”³⁶

In the second section, Zinn attempts to demonstrate his “radical” theories using historical

examples to get the reader to question how history is viewed. For example, in his essay on the

Ludlow Massacre, Zinn shows that, reading it narrowly, it can be viewed as an “‘interesting’

event of the past,” and, therefore, we interpret it as a single event in labor history. On the other

hand, we can view it as “a commentary on a larger question–the relationship of government to

corporate power and of both to movements of social protest. . . .”³⁷ Zinn uses this lens of viewing the past as guide to the present to look at a number of other events, dealing with familiar themes of LaGuardia, the New Deal, abolitionism, Hiroshima and Royan, as well as Vietnam.

The final section of Zinn’s Politics sees him once again return to the historian’s craft

dealing with theory and praxis. In this section of Politics, Zinn deals with meaning in historical

writing. Through examples of people and groups who believed in a history which was not free,

but inevitable, such as the ancient Greeks and Karl Marx, Zinn demonstrates that the meaning of

a writer “will be found not just in what he intends to say, or what he literally says, but in the

effect of his writing on living beings.”³⁸ Zinn expands on this throughout this section on essays

dealing with freedom and responsibility, historians, philosophers, and causation. Throughout

this section, Zinn repeats several ideas, expanding on views presented in the first section,

arguing that the academic historian and philosopher have forgotten the humanistic aims of

history. Zinn saw that history as an artform was useful if we were only concerned with telling a

story, likewise, as a science, if we start from the supposition that “knowledge is useful for the

sake of knowledge” and knowledge is all that we seek. But Zinn believes we need to move

beyond this. History, in Zinn’s view, should aim to serve the present. The historian cannot be

indifferent to human welfare. For the historian can be liberating, reminding us of new

possibilities when the present seems “an irrevocable fact of nature.” Or, like the academic

historian, one can write “dead history,” that is, history with no social aims or nothing to help us

in the present; the kind of history that is written for “lucre and profession,” and not “for the

benefit and use of men.”³⁹

The Politics of History went on to receive mostly positive reviews, including a very positive review in The New York Times which suggested Zinn made “a very strong case. . .against the antiquarianism of the academy” but also noted that “the argument will seem obvious to some, outrageous to others.” The only section of the book the Times reviewer surprisingly disliked was Zinn’s essays in section two which the reviewer called “weak” and suggested that, “These arguments have been made before. And Better.” A review in the Annals of the American Academy, however, was mixed in its assessment, praising Politics for being “forcefully written,” particularly pleased with the essays in section two (in contrast with the Times). However, the review also noted that Zinn “brushes aside too readily the problems of harnessing social activism to the realization of those values.” The review concluded that what Politics amounts to is “essentially a passionate appeal to ultimate values. . . .” The Politics of History, however, remains one of Zinn’s most vital works, and is crucial to understanding Zinn’s views on history and the historical profession.⁴⁰

Throughout the 1970s, Zinn would continue to publish books on contemporary U.S.

history, as well as editing a series of essays on both The Pentagon Papers and a collection

entitled, Justice In Everyday Life: The Way It Really Works. Zinn also continued his acts of civil

disobedience in protest of the Vietnam War, leading to his arrest six times. In addition, Zinn

made his way into The New York Times after angering parents by denouncing the Vietnam War at a Queens University commencement address in 1970.⁴¹ Despite publishing successes, life at Boston University was not easy for Zinn. Without tenure, Zinn’s position would have been

eliminated after the arrival of one John Silber. Whereas Zinn was an antiwar activist, Silber was

bringing the Marines on campus to recruit. Whereas Zinn distrusted authority, Silber felt the

students of BU “must be taught respect for law.” What infuriated Silber the most was Zinn’s

public criticism of him in places like the New York Review of Books and the CBS news show, Sixty Minutes.⁴² In Who Killed Homer, John Heath and Victor Davis Hanson attacked

professional historians for not teaching lower division course work and for allowing research

professors to teach while inexperienced teaching assistants graded papers. This, they concluded,

was “no way to inspire students.”⁴³ Obviously, Hanson and Heath did not have Howard Zinn in

mind as a role model to emulate, but at BU, Howard was often teaching an introductory course on

“Law and Justice” with enrollment exceeding 400 students. However, President Silber would

attempt to take revenge by denying pay raises and refusing to grant Zinn a teaching assistant

unless he would cut his class of 400 down to seventy. Seemingly, this would fly in the face of

logic. However, Silber was concerned about Zinn spreading his ideas and inspiring unruly

students to defy authority. At one point, Silber even accused Zinn of arson in a textbook case of

libel. Silber eventually was forced to retract the statement and apologize to Zinn.⁴⁴ For the

faculty at BU, the Silber years remained a nightmare until he was removed from power in 2006.⁴⁵

In 1980, Zinn published his landmark book. A People’s History of the United States

turned the teaching of U.S. History upside down. Instead of the traditional view of history told

from great men, Zinn flipped the story to tell it from the vantage of the oppressed and those who

resisted their government’s call to war. Thus, Zinn does not emphasize Christopher Columbus’s navigational fortitude, but his cruel and senseless treatment of the population he encountered. The American Revolution–contrary to Gordon Wood’s view–is not so radical, so much as it was

a class war, where the poor had to be cajoled into fighting. The Mexican War is not seen as

“manifest destiny,” but from the standpoint of the deserting troops of Scott’s army; the Civil

War, as seen by the New York Irish, who rioted to protest the drafting of troops and the ability of

the rich to pay to be deferred; World War I from the standpoint of socialists; World War II from

the standpoint of pacifists; and so on, “to the limited extent that anyone person, however he or

she strains, can ‘see’ history from the standpoint of others.”⁴⁶ A People’s History of the United States would go on to sell over one million copies and is now in its sixth edition. Its influence

has spawned an entire genre that looks at “people’s history”–be this during the American

Revolution, the Civil War, the Supreme Court, or even Rome.⁴⁷ A People’s History has also

become a staple of pop-culture, having been referenced in movies like Good Will Hunting and

the HBO tv series The Sopranos. In addition, both Fox and HBO have toyed with the idea of

making a miniseries out of the book, co-produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Moore,

and Howard Zinn.⁴⁸ A People’s History was also later released in two volumes, with the

twentieth century version available on CD narrated by Matt Damon. Furthermore, A People’s

History would accomplish a rare feat in publishing, selling more copies every year than the year prior since publication.⁴⁹ Because of its clear prose and engaging style, Zinn’s book has been used in college and high school classrooms the country over. However, like much of Zinn’s

previous work, A People’s History elicited strong reactions.

In The New York Times book review, Eric Foner, a progressive historian from Columbia, praised Zinn’s book calling it “required reading.” Though he mentioned several faults with the

book, overall, Foner concluded, “open minded readers will benefit from Professor Zinn’s

account, and historians may well view it as a step towards a coherent new version of American

History.” A People’s History also received a glamorous review in TESOL Quarterly where one

reviewer called it “powerful and straightforward.”⁵⁰ Despite these glowing reviews, the book has

been attacked from the left and right. In Dissent Magazine, Michael Kazin called Zinn’s “big book,” “unworthy” of its “fame and influence,” since it fails to ask the biggest question a leftist historian can ask: “Why have most Americans accepted the legitimacy of the capitalist republic in which they live?”⁵¹ On the other end of the political spectrum, Harvard Historian Oscar Handlin

trashed both Zinn and A People’s History. According to Handlin, Zinn was “a stranger to evidence,” his book was “deranged,” a “fairy tale,” “patched together from secondary sources, many used uncritically.” Finally, Handlin concluded, Zinn himself was “anti-American.”⁵²

To be sure, A People’s History is not a flawless book. There are “serious omissions,” as Howard admitted with regard to his scant coverage of the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 and the march on the Pentagon the prior October.⁵³ However, in lieu of all the unique stories of war protesters that he does cover throughout American History, these omissions, serious as they are, are not enough to take away from the overall body of the work. As for Kazin’s “reconsideration” of A People’s History, Zinn responded in Dissent noting that there were “other books” which dealt with ideas such as religion and it was not his intent to write a comprehensive history of the United States or to deal with subjects that had been written about elsewhere. As for not answering the question as to why Americans accepted “the legitimacy of the capitalist republic in which they live,” Zinn responded that the matter had long engaged the intellectual left, but he was not writing to “participate in that kind of theoretical discussion,” but, instead, to “present material which would move my readers in certain directions.” Though Kazin noted Zinn’s history as “cynical” and “fatalistic,” judging from the letters he had received and the overall response from people inspired by the book and “motivated to become active,” Zinn found these charges to be just the opposite. “In any case,” Zinn concluded, “those who read my book can judge for themselves.”⁵⁴ Regarding Handlin’s accusations, Zinn noted that it would not be surprising to see that a supporter of Nixon and someone who had trashed William Appleman Williams’ Contours of American History would dislike his book. Zinn thought Handlin’s logic was that “humanity consists of states; Zinn does not speak well of states; therefore, Zinn hates humanity.” But, as Zinn explains, he does speak well of people’s movements which is what most of A People’s History covers.⁵⁵ It is this fundamental point in which most critiques of Zinn’s work seemed to miss: A People’s History is not a standard textbook and does not try to be. The book was designed to provide counter to the traditional narrative; to give a voice to those who were traditionally left out. When viewed under this lens, Zinn’s book comes across as refreshing and quite useful in assessing how ordinary people impact U.S. History. Despite the critiques, A People’s History has probably inspired more people to become activists and had a greater impact on the social conscious of a generation than any history book ever written.

Though Zinn retired from teaching at Boston University in 1988, he has remained active, both as an author and as a political activist. Throughout the Nineties, Zinn would continue to publish books including his 1994 memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train. He was an ardent opponent of the first Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions on Iraq. When President Clinton was impeached, he wrote an article outlining “ten real reasons” to impeach Clinton. He was a backer of Ralph Nader in 2000, speaking at the Nader Super Rally in Boston. After the 9/11 attacks, Zinn was outspoken in his opposition to terrorism–which he perceived war to be the ultimate act thereof.⁵⁶ In 2002, South End Press reissued seven classic books by Howard Zinn under the guise of the “Radical Sixties” series.⁵⁷ Zinn remains a firm opponent of the current war in Iraq and has supported movements calling for the impeachment of President Bush. Just as he was angering parents by denouncing the Vietnam War, so too has seen the wrath of parents, indignant that Zinn was allowed to speak to their children concerning the Iraq War.⁵⁸ In addition to his ever expanding body of work, Zinn has also been the subject of his own documentary, You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train, borrowing the title from his 1994 memoir. On top of countless talks and interviews, many of which have been published or can be found in audio/visual form on YouTube or peer-to-peer networks, Zinn has also be an ardent playwright.

Of the two plays that Zinn has published since his retirement from BU, Marx In Soho: A Play on History, has garnered the most success, having been performed in theaters across the United States. The play brings us Karl Marx, returning to the twentieth century, but, do to bureaucratic mix up, has returned not to Soho, London, but Soho, New York. Throughout Marx in Soho, Zinn tells us the story of Karl Marx, with Marx as our guide, commenting on his life, his family, and his clashes with anarchist thinkers. But just like President Johnson’s fictitious speech in The Logic of Withdrawal, the Karl Marx we find in Marx in Soho is a blend of Marx and Zinn. No where is this more telling than in Marx’s concluding speech at the end of the play: “Pretend you have boils. Pretend sitting on your ass gives you enormous pain, so you must move, [you] must act.”⁵⁹ Indeed, it is a hallmark of Zinn’s life that he has been such an inspirational figure, motivating others to make a difference in the world. As Noam Chomsky put it, “‘Inspiring’ is not a word I would use very freely, but he has really been an inspiring figure, in his work, in his life.”⁶⁰