Howard Zinn

A committed course

Movements for the civic rights

From 1956, Howard Zinn becomes director of the department of history and social sciences of Spelman College of Atlanta, a university of liberal arts reserved to the coeds Afro-Americans. It takes, at the time of its years of teaching in Georgia, an active share with the movement of the civic rights. On the academic level, it militates with the historian August Meier “to put an end to the meetings of Association historians of the South ( Southern Historical Association ) in hotels practitioner the Racial segregation”. Spelman is also the occasion for him to collaborate with the historian Staughton Lynd and to follow young coeds activists, among whom appeared Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman, now president of the Children' S defense fund. Edelman revealed later that Zinn had constituted a major influence of the course its life. Its proximity with the student movements in particular led it to be useful like advising Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, literally “nonviolent Coordination committee of the students”); he wrote on this subject in 1964 a work entitled SNCC: the new abolitionnists .

Although Zinn was full professor, it was returned in June 1963, after having taken party for the coeds who had defied the traditionally given training with Spelman while taking part in the demonstrations against the Racial segregation in the public places of Atlanta. The years of Zinn with Spelman, of which he says that it are probably most interesting, exciting and instructive his life, are reported in his autobiography You Can' T Be Neutral one has Moving Train: In Personal History off Our Times .

Whereas it was in Spelman, Zinn raised thirty violations of the first and fourteenth amendments of the American Constitution with Albany, Georgia, including/understanding freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly and the equality in front of the law. He denounced the reserve of the president John F. Kennedy to be made apply the law and underlined his passivity like that of his Minister for justice Robert Kennedy or FBI, of John Edgar Hoover, in front of brutalities of the segregationists with regard to the demonstrators for the civic rights.

Zinn wrote much about the fight for the civic rights, at the same time as an actor and that historian. In 1961, it stopped teaching during one year in order to write SNCC: the New Abolitionists and mystical The southern . He affirms in particular in his work on SNCC that the sit-ins against the segregation were initiated by the students and thus independent of the defense organizations of the civic rights most installed.

It is turned over to Spelman in 2005 to give an entitled conference “Against discouragement”.

A pacifist engagement

Bombardment of Royan

After Spelman, Zinn was integrated in the department of political science of the Université of Boston in 1964. Its courses devoted to the Public freedoms appeared, with 400 registered voters each six-month period, among most popular of all the university while at the same time they were optional. He taught 24 years in Boston before taking his retirement in 1988, writing during his Bostonian years the first book to ask the withdrawal of the American troops of the Vietnam. Vietnam: the logic off withdrawal was published since 1967, on the basis of article previously published in Commonweal , The Nation , The Register-leader and Ramparts .

By conviction antifascist, Zinn had voluntarily joined the Air Force during the Second world war. It on this occasion had taken part in bombardments on Berlin, the ex- Czechoslovakia and the Hungary like it describes it in this film. The position anti-war of Zinn is thus based for a great part on its own experience of the combat. In April 1945, it in particular took part in the one of the first military uses of the Napalm, with Royan (France).

These bombardments aimed at German soldiers, who, with the dires of Zinn, had folded up themselves while waiting for the abdication of the Germany and thus did not represent any more any military danger. Its attacks killed not only French soldiers but also civilians. Last nine years later, Zinn is turned over to Royan to consult documents having milked with this operation and to interview inhabitants. In its books The politics off history and The Zinn reader , it describes how the bombardment was decided by the military hierarchy for reasons which were due more to considerations careerists than with legitimate military objectives.

According to Zinn, its experiment as a bomber, compound with its research on the cause and effects of the bombardment of Royan, sensitized it with the moral dilemmas associated with any armed intervention but surout with the atrocities made in the name of defense with dubious military interests. In its lampoon Hiroshima: breaking the silence , it in particular questioned the justifications of military operations assigning the civilians; if he denounces in particular the atomic Bombardements of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, its matter aims also the allied bombardments on the Germany (Dresden, Essen…), the Japan (Tokyo) even the France (Royan), during the Second world war. It establishes a continuity between these bombardments and those which touched Hanoi during the Guerre of Vietnam, and Baghdad during the Guerre of the Gulf.

Vietnam

Zinn was charged during the Guerre with Vietnam of a diplomatic mission in company of the singer activist Daniel Berrigan. Its visit with Hanoi allowed, into full Offensive Small fireclay cup (January 1968), the return of three American aviators, the first soldiers slackened by the North Vietnamese combatants since the beginning of the American bombardment. Was the event largely covered by the media and was discussed in several works like that of Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963-1975 . Zinn remained friendly with the brothers daN and Philipp Berrigan well after this episode.

At the time of the conflict, Daniel Ellsberg, a former analyst of the RAND Corporation, provides to Howard and Roslyn Zinn a secret American governmental report/ratio on in the Guerre of Vietnam, known under the name of Pentagone papers. With the assistance of Noam Chomsky, Zinn published and annotated the report, published by Beacon Close, the editor of confidence of Zinn, in what is known like the edition of the senator Mike Gravel of the Pentagon papers. The latter consists of four volumes and a fifth devoted to the analysis of Chomsky and Zinn.

At the time of the lawsuit of Ellsberg for flight, conspiracy and espionage following the publication of extracts of the Pengagon papers by the NewYork Times, Zinn was called by defense counsel as an expert of the history of American engagement to the Vietnam from the second world war in 1963. Zinn exposed this history during several hours. “I explained that there were nothing in papers which has a military interest being able to weaken the defense of the the United States, which information which they contained were simply embarrassing for our government because they revealed, on the basis of its own memo interservices, how it had lied to the American people. The secrecies contained in Pentagon Papers was likely to embarrass the politicians, to harm the profits of the operating companies of the tin, of the Caoutchouc, the Pétrole. But it is not the same thing as to wound the nation, the people”, Zinn in its autobiography wrote. The continuations against Ellsberg were abandoned with the reason which the charge had been sullied by burgling with the office with the psychiatrist with Ellsberg by a team carried out by Howard Hunt, working for Nixon.

The testimony of Zinn on the motivations which pushed the government to preserve the secret report/ratio was confirmed in 1989 by Erwin Griswold, which, as a prosecuting attorney of the United States under the administration Nixon continued the NewYork Times in the business of the Pentagon papers in 1971. Grisswold succeeds in persuading three judges of the Supreme court to prevent the NewYork Times from continuing to publish extracts of Pentagon Papers, without being able however to obtain a majority of the Court. In 1989, he however recognized in the columns of the Washington Post that the publication of Pentagon papers did not harm the national security. “It quickly appeared with whoever had certain experience of the classified documents, that there was over classification and that the main concern of the promoters of classification was not the national security but in one way or another a governmental embarrassment.”

Zinn supported the movement anti-war of the soldiers veterans during the Guerre of Vietnam. In the film Unfinished symphony , whose title refers to the Symphonie n°3d' Henryk Gorecki, it reconsiders the historical context of the pacifist walk of 1971 of the Vétérans of Vietnam against the war, an association of war veterans, militant for the American withdrawal of the Vietnam. The walkers, since Lexington (Massachussets) until Bunker Hill symbolically recalled the walk with horse of Paul Revere of 1775. Walk was concluded by the massive arrest from 410 veterans and civil by the police force from Lexington. The film depicts in particular the scenes of the Winter soldier investigations , during which 109 old GI and 16 civilians publicly met in Détroit to testify to the atrocities that they made or of which they were pilot with the Vietnam.

a popular history of the United States

As an intellectual, Zinn poses that the point of view traditionally adopted by the works of history is limited enough. Thus, it decides to write itself a work on the History of the United States in order to offer a different prospect for it: it is the birth of a popular history of the United States. This book depicts the fights which opposed the Indiens of America to Europeans, the expansion states-unienne, the revolts of the Esclaves against the system which oppressed them, the oppositions between trade unionists - or simple workers and capitalists, the combat of the women against the patriarchate, the movement carried out by the Blacks against the Racisme and for the Civic right , and other parts of the American History which do not appear traditionally in the books.

After the first publication of the popular history (at the beginning of the Years 1980), the book was a reading often recommended to the pupils and to the students; it is also known to be very a critical good example of pedagogy. It constitutes rare a enough best-seller for a work of academic history of level; published into 1980 in the United States, it was the subject of 5 republications of 22 years.

In spring 2003, to mark the sale of the millionth copy of the work, an event was organized with the 92nd Street Y of New York, Howard Zinn and ten narrators making reading of this text. The whole was on line retransmis by Democracy Now!, presented by Amy Goodman, and placed at the disposal of the public on Internet.

In 2004, Zinn published Voices off has People' S History off the United States with Anthony Arnove. This book, which supplements the popular history (they have parallel structures besides), stops on testimonys with counter-current.

He is member of the International committee of Support for the victims Vietnameses of the Orange Agent and the lawsuit of New York ( CIS ) led by André Bouny.

Howard Zinn also collaborated in the creation of documentary series produced by Alvin H. Perlmutter, it such a baptized a popular history of the United States. According to Internet site of this program, the diffusion would be programmed for 2007.

Theatrical work

Howard Zinn wrote three parts, of which Fille of Venus (1985), her first work. The following part, Emma , take as a starting point the life of Emma Goldman, a Anarchiste of the beginning of the century. Anarchist, feminist and free-thinker, Emma Goldman had to exile themselves of the United States where she was regarded as dangerous taking into account the radical points of view which she defended (with the row of which it is necessary to note a savage opposition to the First World War). The most recent part is Marx in Soho , a creation making a broad place with the History; Brian Jones holding the main role of 1999 has 2005 (it yields its place to Bob Weick), Marx in Soho much was played and applauded in the independent theaters United States, and received warm welcome of criticism.

Distinctions

Price Thomas Merton (1991)

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