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Howard Zinn (born ''. BIOGRAPHY Howard Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn . His father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary , emigrated to the United States with his brother Phil before the outbreak of World War I . Howard's mother Jenny Zinn emigrated from the Eastern Siberia n city of Irkutsk . Both parents were factory workers when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where their children grew. Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending twenty-five cents plus a coupon to the '' New York Post '' for each of 20 volumes of Charles Dickens. {Link without Title} As a young adult, Howard Zinn worked as a shipyard worker and labor organizer in the Brooklyn shipyards; later, he flew bombing missions in Europe during World War II , an experience that shaped his opposition to war. Zinn flew a B-17 with the 490th Bomb Group. In April, 1945 he participated in the bombing of Royan , France , the first time Napalm had been used in warfare. According to Zinn, the bombing took the lives of French civilians and also German soldiers who were doing little more than waiting out the closing days of the war. Nine years later, Zinn visited Royan to examine documents and interview residents. In his books, ''The Politics of History'' and ''The Zinn Reader,'' he concluded that the bombing was connected more to the desire by higher-ups for career advancement than for any legitimate military objective. Zinn later said his experience as a bombardier, combined with his research into the reasons for and effects of the bombing of Royan, sensitized him to the ethical dilemmas faced by G.I.'s during wartime. {Link without Title} Zinn questions the justifications for military operations inflicting civilian casualties in the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo, and . After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill , graduating with a B.A. in 1951 and Columbia University , where he earned an M.A. ( 1952 ) and Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science ( 1958 ). His doctoral dissertation '' LaGuardia In Congress '' was a study of Fiorello LaGuardia 's congressional career. It depicts LaGuardia representing "the conscience of the twenties" as he fought for public power, the right to strike, and the redistribution of wealth by taxation. "His specific legislative program," Zinn wrote, "was an astonishingly accurate preview of the New Deal ." It was published by the Cornell University Press for the American Historical Association. In the decades that followed, Zinn supported the G.I. antiwar movement during the U.S. war in Vietnam, and in the 2001 film '' Unfinished Symphony ,'' Zinn provides the historical context for the march, in 1971, by Vietnam Veterans Against The War from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Bunker Hill, "which retraced Paul Revere 's ride of 1775 and ended in a massive arrest of 410 veterans and civilians by the Lexington police." The film depicts "scenes from the 1971 'Winter Soldier' investigations, during which former G.I.s testified about atrocities" they either participated in or witnessed in Vietnam. {Link without Title} In 1956 , Zinn was appointed chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College (now Atlanta University Center, Spelman College) and then a college for black women in Atlanta , where he participated in the Civil Rights Movement . Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd at Spelman and mentored young student activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman . A tenured professor, Zinn was fired in June 1963 after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in '' The Nation ,'' Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. An account of Zinn's years at Spelman is in ''You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.'' His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me." {Link without Title} As a 39-year-old professor, Zinn claims to have observed 30 violations of the First and Fourteenth amendment rights to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection of the laws. In an article on the Civil Rights movement in Albany, Zinn describes the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and of the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law. {Link without Title} Zinn wrote frequently about the struggle for Civil Rights, both as a participant and historian. and in 1960–61, he took a year off from teaching to write ''SNCC: The New Abolitionists'' and ''The Southern Mystique.'' [http://www.identitytheory.com/people/birnbaum10.html In 1964, he joined the faculty at Boston University where he taught history and civil liberties until 1988. He was a leading critic of the Vietnam War . Zinn's diplomatic visit to Hanoi with Rev. Daniel Berrigan during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 resulted in the return of three American airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun. Zinn remained friends and allies with the Berrigan brothers, Phil and Daniel over the years. Daniel Ellsberg a former RAND consultant who had secretly copied The Pentagon Papers , which described internal planning and policy decisions of the United States in the Vietnam War, gave a copy of them to Howard and Roslyn Zinn. Along with Noam Chomsky , Zinn edited and annotated the copy of The Pentagon Papers that Ellsberg entrusted to him. Zinn's longtime publisher, Beacon Press, published what has come to be known as the Senator Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, four volumes plus a fifth volume with analysis by Chomsky and Zinn. At Ellsburg's criminal trial for theft, conspiracy, and espionage, defense attorneys called Zinn as an expert witness to explain to the jury the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from World War II to 1963. Zinn discussed that history for several hours and later reflected on his time before the jury. "I explained there was nothing in the papers of military significance that could be used to harm the defense of the United States, that the information in them was simply embarrassing to our government because what was revealed, in the government's own interoffice memos, was how it had lied to the American public. The secrets disclosed in the Pentagon Papers might embarrass politicians, might hurt the profits of corporations wanting tin, rubber, oil, in far-off places. But this was not the same as hurting the nation, the people," Zinn wrote in his autobiography. Most of the jurors later said they voted for acquittal. However, the federal judge dismissed the case on grounds it had been tainted by the Nixon administration's 'plumber' operation that had broken into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Zinn asserts that the U.S. will end its war with and occupation of Iraq when resistance within the military increases, in the same way resistance within the military contributed to ending the U.S. war in Vietnam. He compares the demand by a growing number of contemporary U.S. military families to end the war in Iraq to the parallel "in the Confederacy in the Civil War, when the wives of soldiers rioted because their husbands were dying and the plantation owners were profiting from the sale of cotton, refusing to grow grains for civilians to eat." {Link without Title} Howard Zinn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University . He has received the Thomas Merton Award and the Eugene V. Debs Award. In 1998, he won the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the following year won the Upton Sinclair Award, which honors social activism. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Roslyn in the United States. The couple have two children, Myla and Jeff, and five grandchildren. Roslyn is an artist and editor who has a role in editing all of Howard's books. Zinn's autobiography is ''You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.'' A biographical documentary film of the same name was produced in 2004 and shown in select theaters. It is available {Link without Title} on DVD. The film, by featuring music by Billy Bragg , Woodie Guthrie , and Pearl Jam . The film includes footage of Howard and Roslyn Zinn, Noam Chomsky , Marian Wright Edelman , Daniel Ellsberg , Tom Hayden and Alice Walker . The 78-minute film on DVD includes these special features: On Human Nature and Aggression; his speech at Veterans for Peace Conference, 2004; and audio of his 1971 speech at the Boston Common on Civil Disobedience. In the film, Noam Chomsky says Zinn "changed the consciousness of a generation." ''A PEOPLE'S HISTORY'' '' A People's History Of The United States '' seeks to present U.S. history through the eyes of ordinary people, depicting the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalism, women against Patriarchy , African-Americans against racism and for Civil Rights , and others, as Zinn suggests, whose stories are not often told in mainstream histories. In the years since the first edition of "A People's History" was published in 1980, it has been assigned reading both as a high school and college textbook, and is one of the most widely known examples of Critical Pedagogy . In the spring of 2003 , to commemorate the sale of the millionth copy of ''A People's History,'' a dramatic reading from the book was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The reading featured Danny Glover , Andre Gregory , James Earl Jones , Myla Pitt , Marisa Tomei , Kurt Vonnegut , Alice Walker , Alfre Woodard , Harris Yulin , Jeff Zinn, producing artistic director of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater and Howard Zinn as narrator. The event was aired on ''Democracy Now!'', hosted by Amy Goodman, and is still available online. [http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20040705 The program was also released as a book and CD under the title, ''The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known'' . In 2004 Zinn published ''Voices of A People's History of the United States'' with Anthony Arnove . ''Voices'' expands on the concept and provides a large collection of dissident voices in long form. The book is intended as a companion to ''A People's History'' and parallels its structure. Zinn was a consultant to the six-part documentary ''. According to the documentary's website, the series is expected to be broadcast in early 2007. When Matt Damon , his mother, and brother moved next door to the Zinns in West Newton, Massachusetts , the families became friends, and the Zinns sometimes sat with the Damon boys. After Damon became an actor, he included a reference to ''A People's History'' in his film '' Good Will Hunting ,'' and read the latter half of ''People's History'' for an audiobook released February 1 , 2003 (ISBN 0060530065). ''People's History'' was also referenced in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show '' The Sopranos ''. In October 2005, Chicago's venerable indie punk label Thick Records released a CD by Springfield, IL - based indie rock band ( Resident Genius ), which featured excerpts from several Zinn talks, tying them into the band's songs. The CD is titled "''You Can't Blow Up A Social Relationship''." PLAYWRIGHT Zinn has written three plays, including Daughter of Venus (1985), his first play. Zinn's second play, Emma, is based on the life of the early 20th Century anarchist Emma Goldman . In the words of the publisher, South End Press: "With his wit and unique ability to illuminate history from below, historian and playwright Howard Zinn dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views, including her opposition to World War I. "As Zinn writes in his Introduction, Emma Goldman 'seemed to be tireless as she traveled the country, lecturing to large audiences everywhere, on birth control (‘A woman should decide for herself’), on the falsity of marriage as an institution (‘Marriage has nothing to do with love’), on patriotism (‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’) on Free Love (‘What is love if not free?’), and also on drama, including Shaw, Ibsen, and Strindberg. "This book will be of immense interest to feminists, anarchists, American historians, and people interested in the long history of resistance and protest in the United States." {Link without Title} His most recent is '' in the title role starting in 1999 through 2005 . In February 2005 , Bob Weick took on the title role in a traveling tour. Details of the traveling tour are at Iron Age Theatre. QUOTATIONS "Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no screams, seen no children dismembered. But now I had to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany. I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other warriors: Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we did not have to think anymore. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it was all right. "I began to think about the motives of the Western powers and Stalinist Russia and wondered if they cared as much about fascism as about retaining their own empires, their own power, and if that was why they had military priorities higher than bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. Six million Jews were killed in the death camps (allowed to be killed?). Only 60,000 were saved by the war—1 percent. "A gunner on another crew, a reader of history with whom I had become friends, said to me one day: “You know this is an imperialist war. The fascists are evil. But our side is not much better.” I could not accept his statement at the time, but it stuck with me." {Link without Title} "I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - during an interview for TomPaine.com widely misattributed to Thomas Jefferson .[http://www.monticello.org/library/reference/quotes.html#confirm Zinn is not a Pacifist : to him the term suggests ''passive'' — rather than ''active'' — resistance. For example, he offered the following alternative to bombing Kosovo and stressed its effectiveness: "I think of South Africa, where a decision to engage in out-and-out armed struggle would have led to a bloody civil war with huge casualties, most of them black. Instead, the African National Congress decided to put up with apartheid longer, but wage a long-term campaign of attrition, with strikes, sabotage, economic sanctions, and international pressure. It worked." {Link without Title} BOOKS WRITTEN OR EDITED BY HOWARD ZINN Books
Forewords and introductions by Howard Zinn
Compact discs
ONLINE INTERVIEWS AND VIDEO
EXTERNAL LINKS
Criticism of Howard Zinn
Ways of Telling History Compared
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