Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who
was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and the author of
the seminal
A People's History of the United States, died today at the age of 87 of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California. He was
in a swimming pool doing laps and was spotted immediately by lifeguards
but died instantly.
Zinn's brand of history put common citizens at the center of the story
and inspired generations of young activists and academics to remember
that change is possible. As he wrote in his autobiography,
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
(1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I
would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than
informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more
prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it.
This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."
Watch these videos to get a sense of what we've lost.
On three holy wars, from 2008:
On human nature and aggression, from 2004:
On civil disobedience, from 2002:
And read
this report from Atlanta from the August 6, 1960 issue of The Nation for a sense of the struggles that animated the young Zinn.
