Howard Zinn, a Historian for the People, Dead at 87

Written by Ralph E. Stone. Posted in News

• greg kamin

  I heard the heartbreaking news last night. The People’s HIstory was a transformative work. He chronicled the activists, the dissidents, the organizers… the unsung heroes of American history. But he wasn’t just a writer, he was an activist himself who believed that he needed to participate in the struggle for social change.

  Democracy Now had a beautiful tribute this morning.
  http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute

  Here’s one of the things Naomi Klein had to say in this morning’s show:
  But the thing about Howard is that the history that he taught was not just about losing the official illusions about nationalism, about the heroic figures. It was about telling people to believe in themselves and their power to change the world. So, like any wonderful teacher, he left all of these lessons behind. And I think we should all just resolve to be a little bit more like Howard today.

• http://District5Diary Rob Anderson

  Zinn was a political propagandist, not a serious historian.
  http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385

• Ralph

  Howard Zinn a propagandist? Let me say it again. In the years since the first edition of “A People’s History of the United States” was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many high school and college history courses; “A Peoples History” routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year. The book is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy. The basic tenet of “critical pedagogy” is that there is an unequal social stratification in our society based upon class, race and gender. Critical pedagogy reminiscent of the Hebrew symbol of tikkun, which means “to heal, repair, and transform the world, all the rest is commentary.” Critical pedagogy considers how education can provide individuals with the tools to better themselves and strengthen democracy, to create a more egalitarian and just society, and thus to deploy education in a process of progressive social change. It involves teaching the skills that will empower citizens and students to become sensitive to the politics of representations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and other cultural differences in order to foster critical thinking and enhance democratization. That’s the kind of propaganda our students and society as a whole need.

• greg kamin

  Rob, I’ve read all the criticisms of Howard Zinn -criticisms from more important people than some forgotten, third-rate magazine publisher. I’ve heard Zinn’s work referred to as cynical, left-wing, anti-American, and that establishment catch-all phrase, “not serious,” which basically means any history which challenges the establishment paradigms.

  One thing you won’t hear is that it’s false, because it isn’t. Does it have a point of view? Absolutely. All historians have a point of view. Zinn’s point of view was that change doesn’t come about because of a Great Man. Change isn’t handed down from a magnanimous president or a wise Supreme Court. Change comes from below, from countless courageous acts of defiance, from years of struggle by millions of unsung heroes that make it inevitable for those in power to act.

  One of the exchanges from the other day on KPFA stands out in my mind regarding this issue of “seriousness.” When Amy Goodman played a clip of historian Arthur Schelsinger saying that Zinn was a “polemicist…not a historian” and that he doesn’t take Zinn very seriously, Klein responded, ” I don’t think that would have bothered Howard Zinn at all. He never was surprised when power protected itself. And he really was a people’s historian, so he didn’t look to the elites for validation. ”

  This is exactly right. Schlesinger glommed on to a wealthy family (the Kennedies in this case), and in return for their patronage, he idolized them. Schlesinger adored being close to power and basking in its trappings -he worshiped power, and therefore his history is the history of the powerful. That’s why the establishment reveres him.

  Zinn, by contrast, told the forgotten history of the people in the trenches who fought power. So it’s no surprise that the powerful view him with derision. But to those of us working for social change, Zinn is a giant. Zinn’s history is *our* history. Zinn’s history tells us -*demonstrates* to us, that this work is important and meaningful, and it inspires us to be better human beings.

• http://District5Diary Rob Anderson

  Zinn’s account of American is indeed “false” in what it leaves out as much as what he asserts. He writes serious history the way that Fox News provides a “fair and balanced” account of the day’s events.

  I have the latest edition of Zinn’s book, and, as a history major myself, I find his failure to provide any scholarly apparatus surpising. He has a bibliography but no footnotes or endnotes to back up his interpretation of events. Writing history is like writing a legal brief; you have to back up everything you’re saying with a reference, including page numbers, to specific documents.

  Zinn is only a “giant” to his ideological allies “in the trenches,” not to anyone who takes history or the truth seriously. Schlesinger, by the way, wrote some serious history, espeically on Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

• greg kamin

  Rob, you’re making a somewhat dichotomous argument.

  If you’re saying that Howard Zinn leaves out a lot, I would agree. He leaves out some of the things that everybody else focuses on exclusively. And he writes about things that establishment historians leave out. That’s precisely what makes him such an important historian. It doesn’t make him unbiased, but if you think anyone is unbiased, including establishment historians like Schlesinger, then you’re deluding yourself.

  Now if you’re actually insinuating that he’s falsifying things, that’s quite an assertion to make without evidence. Taking the mere fact that he doesn’t list page numbers in the bibliography, something that I’ve seen quite often, and from that concocting the idea that he’s falsifying the historical record, is a pretty wild accusation, one that even his “serious” detractors don’t make.

• http://District5Diary Rob Anderson

  “Taking the mere fact that he doesn’t list page numbers in the bibliography, something that I’ve seen quite often, and from that concocting the idea that he’s falsifying the historical record, is a pretty wild accusation, one that even his “serious” detractors don’t make.”

  Serious historians use either footnotes or endnotes to cite their sources. Zinn doesn’t do that, which makes his books a lot like extended op-eds containing nothing but his opinions. Of course he’s not deliberately falsifying history, but whatever he thought he was doing doesn’t make his work serious history.

• Ralph

  Enough already. Let the man rest in peace.

• Daniele E.

  well, footnotes or no footnotes, i like this quote from zinn himself, taken from his appearance on the program “Radio Boston” on wbur-boston, from this past summer. it highlights his contribution to the annals of history, and explains his deserved (in my opinion) popularity:

  “One of the advantages of a different kind of history is students learning the history of working people and of rebels and dissenters and i think it is encouraging to young people—it creates citizens instead of subjects. In a democracy, citizens gather and they make history”.

  interestingly, and not unrelated, last year i read the book “The Wisdom of Oz”, written by the great-granddaughter of L. Frank Baum…in it, she points out how “Although Dorothy does melt the Wicked Witch of the West in both the book and the film, her climactic confrontation with the evil witch is compromised in the MGM extravaganza. In the film Dorothy throws a pail of water to protect her friend the Scarecrow who catches fire when the Wicked Witch tosses a match on him. Because the witch is standing in the background, the water inadvertently splatters and melts her. Dorothy’s confrontation is no more than a fortuitous accident, and her image of being a victim of circumstance is maintained. In sharp contrast to the movie, Baum describes Dorothy as outraged when the witch tries to take the silver slippers by tripping her with an invisible metal bar. Dorothy angrily hurls a pail of water, accessing a deep power and rage that lays dormant within her. Perhaps the writers of the movie script were afraid to unleash the potent feminine energy that had been locked within Dorothy’s indomitable spirit.”

  Bet you didn’t know the true story, because what we all know is the MGM version of this fabled fairy tale, fairy tales invariably being accounts of the “Hero’s (and in this case Heroine’s) Journey…but what a difference, wouldn’t you say?

  And therein lies the beauty (and importance) of Zinn’s work. He encourages us to get in touch with our innate power to effect change—ourselves. And what greater gift is there in life?

  Encourage: 1) to inspire with courage, spirit or hope: HEARTEN implies the lifting of dispiritedness or despondency by an infusion of fresh courage or zeal…To give help or patronage to: FOSTER…ENCOURAGE suggests the raising of one’s confidence esp. by an external agency…and finally INSPIRIT implies instilling life, energy, courage or vigor into something.
  —Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

  Thanks, Howard Zinn, for shedding some light onto these actors of history. They are us.

• greg kamin

  Well Rob, I suppose everybody’s entitled to their opinions. His books are back on the best seller lists and used as teaching aids in thousands of classrooms across America. But you detest progressives and activists, so it doesn’t surprise me that you find nothing valuable in his work.

• Daniele E.

  thought i would share this. alice walker wrote a piece about howard zinn, her former teacher, after his passing:
  http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/01/31/alice_walker_says_goodbye_to_her_friend_howard_zinn/?page=1

• http://District5Diary Rob Anderson

  I don’t detest “progressives and activists,” but I do think they are often smug, self-righteous, and intellectually lazy and dishonest. Zinn is simply not a serious historian. Stringing out your political opinions for hundreds of pages isn’t real history, and it’s a disservice to young people to say that it is. The main reason his books sell so well is that progressive teachers assign them as required reading, not that , in any event, popularity conveys anything important about a book or an author.

• greg kamin

  Daniele, that was a beautiful piece.

• Daniele E.

  thanks, greg. i thought so…
  the only thing i remember from history class was that charlemagne was crowned in the year 800—nice round number, you know? (of course, i went to a french school)…but seriously, i’m glad that howard had the vision to focus his attention on the people that are usually left out of the…”standardized fare”…
  hierarchies are crumbling—let’s face it, rob. Sure, academic excellence will always be relevant and never go out of style, but humanity is moving in the direction of equality, and part of that is recognizing the fruits of the “little guy”…howard zinn HIGHLIGHTS this for us—his prerogative. And in so doing elevates the “little guy” to his or her rightful place…at the table of history. And how you can say that zinn is just recounting his “opinions” i find strange, after all, these are all real people, real times, real incidents. i’m sure he would have gotten sued a million times over by whichever interested party if he was just spouting fiction!
  in any event, just for the record, this morning’s on abc’s “This Week” they included Howard Zinn in their in memoriam section…and abc isn’t exactly a bastion of leftists…This morning, along with george will, they even had the head of fox news…for what it’s worth…