Howard Zinn: The People’s Historian
Howard Zinn, legendary historian, author and activist, died last week at the age of 87. His most famous book is “A People’s History of the United States.” Zinn told me last May, “The idea of ‘A People’s History’ is to go beyond what people have learned in school ... history through the eyes of the presidents and the generals in the battles fought in the Civil War, [to] the voices of ordinary people, of rebels, of dissidents, of women, of black people, of Asian-Americans, of immigrants, of socialists and anarchists and troublemakers of all kinds.”
It is fitting to write of Zinn’s life at the start of Black History Month. Although he was white, he wrote eloquently of the civil rights struggle and was a part of that movement as well. Fifty years ago, on Feb. 1, 1960, four black students entered the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C., and sat down at the “whites only” lunch counter. They were refused service, and returned day after day. Each day, more and more people came with them. The lunch-counter desegregation movement spread to other Southern cities. By July, the Greensboro Woolworth lunch counter was desegregated. This week, the International Civil Rights Center and Museum opened at the site of that original lunch-counter protest.
At the time of the sit-ins, Zinn was a professor at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta. He told me why, after seven years there, he was fired: “The students at Spelman College rose up out of that very tranquil and controlled atmosphere at the college during the sit-ins and went into town, got arrested, they came back fired up and determined to change the conditions of their lives on campus. ... I supported them in their rebellion, and I was too much for the administration of the college.” Zinn wrote in the afterword of “A People’s History”: “It was not until I joined the faculty of Spelman College ... that I began to read the African-American historians who never appeared in my reading lists in graduate school. Nowhere in my history education had I learned about the massacres of black people that took place again and again, amid the silence of a national government pledged, by the Constitution, to protect equal rights for all.”
One of his students at Spelman was Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. Soon after she learned of Zinn’s death, Walker explained: “He was thrown out because he loved us, and he showed that love by just being with us. He loved his students. He didn’t see why we should be second-class citizens.” Just a few years ago, Zinn was invited back to Spelman to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree.
World-renowned linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky, a longtime friend of Zinn’s, reflected on Zinn’s “reverence for and his detailed study of what he called ‘the countless small actions of unknown people’ that lead to those great moments that enter the historical record.” Zinn co-wrote, with Anthony Arnove, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” with speeches, letters and other original source material from those “unknown people” who have shaped this country. It was made into a star-studded documentary, which premiered on the History Channel just weeks before Zinn died. Matt Damon, its executive producer, gave “A People’s History” enormous popular exposure in the hit movie “Good Will Hunting” when his character Will recommended the book to his psychiatrist. Damon was Zinn’s neighbor in Newton, Mass., and knew him since he was 10 years old.
Last May, when I interviewed Zinn, he reflected on Barack Obama’s first months in office: “I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King. I’m sure he pays verbal homage, as everyone does, to Martin Luther King, but he ought to think before he sends missiles over Pakistan, before he agrees to this bloated military budget, before he sends troops to Afghanistan, before he opposes the single-payer system.
“He ought to ask: ‘What would Martin Luther King do? And what would Martin Luther King say?’ And if he only listened to King, he would be a very different president than he’s turning out to be so far. I think we ought to hold Obama to his promise to be different and bold and to make change. So far, he hasn’t come through on that promise.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
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Re; Two problems, possibly related
By Green, Chris at Feb 09, 2010 13:47 PM
Perhaps Goodman thinks that people who have never heard of Zinn who read this article might become interested in Zinn if they see he has credentials like being mentioned in Good Will Hunting or that a "star studded" cast appeared in a movie based on his work.
Goodman did a better job covering Zinn's life in the segment of the show where Chomsky and Anrove and, I think Naomi Klein, appeared to discuss Zinn's life. Zinn had such a rich life it is difficult to fully impart that richness in a short article but I think more important than the celebrity connections were things like his work against the Vietanam war (e.g. getting beat up by the cops), his battles with John Silber, (the right wing lunatic former president of Boston University), how a People's HIstory has been taught in classrooms in this country (how many I would be interested to know), how the presence of the book has influenced efforts to teach kids history, how the book has caused controversy among elite intellectuals, the resistance to using the book as a textbook in schools, the resistance of some parents when Zinn was invited to speak to high school classes, and so on.
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Re: Re; Two problems, possibly related
By Street, Paul at Feb 09, 2010 20:45 PM
Chris - such great comments. I concur on everything you say. I also did not really like that line on Obama and King, which didn't quite match up all that well with the wise counsel in A People's History or with HZ's wonderful recent political writings like this one.
"Zinn had such a rich life it is difficult to fully impart that richness in a short article." I agree and so I really question the purpose of them putting up a 726-word quick-hit "star-studded" essay like the one above. (Do it right or don't do it at all ...and think twice about letting our underlings disregard the fact that your title has [again] already been used by a non-celebrity).
Funny thing on left-liberal celebrity culture: that earlier and much better DN! reflection on Zinn's remarkable life (with NC, AW, AA, and NK) was broadast with AG speaking/interviewing from the posh Sundance Film Fesitival.
I interact with more rank-and-file left sorts (left Marxists and left anarchs, working lass folks) who certainly value much of DN!'s content but can't relate to flying out to Sundance one day and Copenhagen the other day and so on (I wonder if AG will do a piece on her carbon footprint, which must be quite impressive) and who yes tire of the parade of "names" and folks with holy P(iled) h (igh and). D(eep) degrees (I gave mine to Goodwill). We are levelers on the whole and not very impressed by all the jet-setting, the fancy educational certificates, and such...
I will add that I heard AG speak before hundreds at the ISO's socialism conference in Chicago last July and she opened with flattering comments about Obama's supposedly virtuous noble community-organizer past and about his supposed openness to being pushed left. These comments elicited well-deserved eye-rolling and one audible groan at the table where I sat. (I understand the tactical nature of AG's early response to Obama but I think it was already long past time to have abandoned such sillness by then.)
Fortunately AG was followed by Jermy Scahill, who came out and said that Obama "is an Orwellian character. He makes people think war is peace." And of course AG has since had plenty of folks on to explain how terrible Obama has been...not however the leading left author on the Obama phenomenon, himself a non- [and in fact anti-] celebrity...
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Re: Re: Re; Two problems, possibly related
By McGehee, Michael at Feb 09, 2010 22:59 PM
the folks who made the documentary Golden Rule have contacted DN numerous times to get on the show and not even response. unless matt damon or someone of notoriety is involved they dont care. maybe if AG knew chomsky plugs the shit out of Tom Fergusson, who is a professor too!, and who features widely in the documentary and whose book by the same name is the focal point of the film, then maybe she would have them on and talk about the investment theory of politics.
maybe if alec baldwin reads the book aloud she will have them on.
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Re: Re: Re: Re; Two problems, possibly related
By Green, Chris at Feb 10, 2010 13:21 PM
She said those things about Obama, really? Wow, I think that is a reflection of the modest but not inconsiderable inroads that DN! has made into the mainstream liberal community. I get the impression that DN! grew in exposure and prestige during the Bush years. Alot of folks who werent radicals but were moved to feelings of intense opposition to Bush seemed to become exposed to DN! as a source of anti-Bush news and argument. I've been amazed by some of the establishment figures who have condescended to go on her show or be interviewed by her in settings outside the studio. She has become a bit of a left wing celebrity in her own right, appearing as a pundit every so often on mainstream TV shows, including the Colbert Report. Alot of college age persons on the liberal-left seem to know who she is even if they don't know much about her history. She has twice in the last three years been to Bellingham Washington, where my Master's degree instituion is, a city that is kind of out in the middle of nowhere in northern Washington state. The last time she was there, last year, I think that her speech on the university campus was a sold out event. Some of the people that I know who exhibited the most enthusiasm about her appearance in their midst are the sort of people who came to political consciousness during the Bush years and have hearts very much in the right place but still are rather naive as demonstrated by how they fell hook, line and sinker for Obama. I know one of them who probably dosen't know who Paul Street (or Thomas Ferguson) is but definitely knows who Amy Goodman is.
I get the impression that as DN! has grown, it has come to rely more on less radical sectors of the American liberal-left as sources of support. It has probably had to find a balance between being radical and getting support from less radical sources that can help it increase its exposure. If they have a choice of guests for a segment between Michael Moore and Paul Street(or Thomas Ferguson) I think the DN! people will most definitely choose Moore because Moore is well known and a more congenial guest to liberal listeners with money to donate to the show. Even though Street and Ferguson would probably provide substanially superior analysis to Moore. I remember last year or the year before they had a guest on for one segment, some editor at Ms. magazine who knew Obama's mother and this editor talked to Goodman about how Obama's mom was a great humanitarian and just a really swell lady. The segment was completely useless as far as useful information or insightful analysis was concerned and Goodman's questions to the guest certainly didn't add anything to the segment but perhaps the segment appealed to liberals in the audience.
DN! is still a very useful and often superb show though there are a few ways in which I think it shortchanges its audience. I see today one of their segments is a sort of bland obituary to the late John Murtha. The segment focuses exclusively on Murtha coming out against the Iraq war in late 2005 and plays a brief interview that Goodman did with Murtha. Murtha's stance against the war was interesting but not morally significant since it was it based not on the fact that the war was and is imperialist and a war crime but on the argument that the war wasn't working and Bush was making a mess of it, etc. Mainstream liberals, including some listening to DN!, may think Murtha's significance was his opposition to the war but i think much more significant was his service as a really brazen whore for defense contractors who contributed to his campaign. Murtha seemed willing to secure government contracts, to slip pork barrel projects into appropriations bills, no questions asked, for virtually anyone who contributed a substantial amount of money to his election coffers. Murtha is a poster child for pork barrel corruption and I would have hoped that Goodman might have at least mentioned that but she did not. I hope, in the coming days or weeks, they will interview Ken Silverstein or somebody like that to talk about Murtha's real significance
I mean, I hate to be an armchair quarterback and nit-picker (no, honestly, I enjoy criticizing other people). I don't envy Goodman's task, trying to survive as a small dissident news outlet without anything close to the money that corporate outlets have. Obviously you got to make some compromises but compromising can go too far sometimes. I think it would be nice if Goodman shook things up a little on her show. Instead of going to the Sundance film festival, she should go to more gritty places. I mean, she dosen't have to nearly get herself killed as she did getting severely beat up by Indonesian soldiers in East Timor in 1991 but she's got to get more gritty. And it would be nice if she would be a little more provocative in her interviews, she should have more confrontations like she did with Henry Kissinger about East Timor or even her phone interview with Bill Clinton in 2000. I know she and Gonzalez had a great interview with Lou Dobbs a couple of years ago where they made Dobbs angry and made him look like a fool but I wish they could do more of that. Then again, what mainstream bigshot would come on her show if they knew she was going to make them look bad? She had an interview with Jimmy Carter a few years ago that I seem to remember was conducted in a friendly manner and she didn't press him very hard about East Timor and let him get away with some vague BS about that But maybe that was understandable in the circumstances.
One thing that irritates me is the very formal, somewhat robotic, self-important manner of her broadcasting delivery (I'm sure she's agreeable enough in private). I wish she would adopt the more informal, laid back style of the sort that Doug Henwood has on his radio show. Get gritty Amy!!!!!
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Re^4: Two problems, possibly related
By Field, Sam at Feb 10, 2010 17:02 PM
Street, to be fair, "The People's Historian" is a pretty obvious title for an article on Howard Zinn. I see several articles in various websites dated earlier than your own that use this title for their obituaries. Even though I can see your point about the other title I think a tempering of suspicion may be in order. The fact that you raise the issue of celebrity attachment is also slightly ironic since your own writings rely heavily on left radical celebrities such as Zinn, Chomsky, Pilger and others. Not that this is a bad thing, your writing is always extremely lucid and informative and mostly gets the nail on its head.
I'd be more interested to hear your take on the coverage of Obama on Democracy Now! during the early stages of his campaign. Without having undertaken any real research project on the topic, it seemed to me to be surprisingly uncritical until later in his bid to the nomination. I was relieved later on when I found the more critical coverage starting to build up. Of course that was after it was apparent that John Edwards would not be a viable option. I only started watching DN! early in the second G. W. Bush term though, so I have no idea how the coverage compares to the 2004 election.
Some of the criticism of DN! here is undoubtedly warranted but it's important to remember that broad social movements tend to not fit neatly into a newsroom. When putting together a newscast it's far easier to invite some person who has devoted much of his or her time to a given subject, which is bound to mean a large number of people with advanced educations, if only because journalistic criteria of 'respectability' are going to require some professional credentials to back the most critical points of view. This is less true of DN! than the corporate media but how much of those restrictions are inherent in the medium is debatable.
One scene from Control Room comes to mind where a commentator critical of the US is on a program on Al Jazeera and one of the editors berates his staff for letting him on because of his one-sided criticism of the US. Journalistic 'balance' is always going to have its casualties and I don't see any way around that other than vigilance in always pursuing the unbridled facts. At any rate I find DN! to be a very valuable source of news whether guests are system critical or of a left-liberal slant and I see a definite need for the latter if DN! is to achieve the coverage of broad issues, political, economic and cultural, that it is aiming at.
Thanks to those that mentioned Golden Rule and Thomas Ferguson. I watched the documentary and I am now definitely going to read the book it was based on. Seems excellent.
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Response to Sam Field
By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2010 19:17 PM
Sam Field I did temper my suspicion, saying myself (see above - "@McGehee") that the title thing was "probably over-paranoid."
It's wrong to suggest celebrity-attachment in my quoting of Zinn, Chomsky, and Pilger (you might have added Arundhati Roy). I quote them simply because they offer remarkable, eloquently stated insights. None of them are really mainstream celebrities outside the left in the sense of say, Robert Redford or Jimmy Carter or Alec Baldwin (that great brow-beater of children) or people like that of course. Chomsky/Pilger et al. just have remarkable merit-based credibility (intimately related to their "celebrity") for me and others on the left
I've been quoting Lance Selfa of the ISO quite a bit lately and he is not a celebrity. Other non-celebrities I've quoted a fair bit over the years: Adolph Reed, Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, Edward S. Herman, Charles Derber, Giovanni Arrighhi, David Harvey, Anthony Arnove....folks with much less celebrity status outside left intellectual circles.
Folks would write me and complain about a certain childish hopefulness about Obama on DN! in 2007-08 but I could not verify the legitimacy of the complaint. I didn't follow DN! much leading up to the election in part because their staffers kept reaching out to me (who did more than any other left writer on the reality of the Obama phenomenon, for better or worse) and then I would respond and it would all fizzle and get lost and forgotten. I didn't start these contacts( [I'm not a very energetic celebrity-seeker!), .they did. I found that a little alienating and my viewership suffered.
Recently we had AG asking Michael Moore on DN! for his extended judgment on Obama's first year. Yes, Michael Moore, who had a truly ridiculous and giant liberal man crush on "Obama the [supposedly left-progressive] Movement" in 2007 and 2008. I wrote a piece while back called "Michael Moore and Barack Obama: A Love Story" --- read it here.
But Michael Moore is a celebrity* and he is (foolishly) "disappointed" in his onetime hero's service to the very power centers to which I (hardly alone) showed him (and the rest of the truly "viable" candidate field) to be deeply loyal and beholden from from early on.
* Notice for what its worth that MM did not go talk to left "celebrities" Chomsky or Zinn or Naomi Klein (or, further down the feeding chain.... the Marxists Doug Henwood, David Harvey, Michael Yates, and/or Samir Amin or the left libertarian Parecon founders Mike Albert and Robin Hahnel, to mention some "casualties of journalistic 'balance'") on alternatives to the profits system in his movie "Capitalism: a Love Story." We heard from a bunch of priests and some small-time high wage capitalist firms, but not from any of the leading anti-captialist minds in the country and world.... but I digress.
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Re: Response to Sam Field
By Field, Sam at Feb 11, 2010 00:43 AM
You're of course right about the hard earned credibility of the people mentioned and I agree that their celebrity status is a result of that. You mentioned Alice, Matt and Noam in the same sentence in your initial post and I guess that's what threw me off. They don't inhabit the same universe as far as fitness to comment on political issues goes. I thought you were referring to a tendency to rely on big names in general, and not mainstream celebrities specifically. The latter I find to be generally unhealthy and unconstructive.
Still, I wonder if not having the occasional mainstream celebrity on DN! might have good effects as well, sparking an interest with people who don't usually read left wing media, and as long as it doesn't interfere with quality reporting, why not? Having a broad appeal isn't necessarily a move towards a toothless left liberal consensus. I might be wrong about this and you can certainly argue that people who get the level of exposure of, say, Michael Moore don't need the access DN! provides. I don't want to end up dismissing the potential of the format by making unfounded claims about its limitations, and I realize the call for 'balance' hasn't forced good journalists like Pilger to make a casualty of truth in reporting.
Michael Moore I try to avoid. I don't read interviews of him and I haven't seen his most recent documentaries. I see what you mean that it is slightly odd to ask him, who lent his weight to fuel the Obama hysteria, what he thinks about the presidency. I always wondered if Moore ever thought about the unique opportunity he has had to make available to a huge audience truly radical ideas such as for instance Parecon. Instead he seems content to let his polemics turn into Democratic vs Republican party politics.
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Moore v. Zinn
By Street, Paul at Feb 11, 2010 01:34 AM
Agreed, Sam. I have tended to watch and read Moore's stuff thanks to the legacy of "Roger and Me" (one of the truly great documentaries of all time - he has never equaled it since) and some of the other stuff (parts of "Capitalism: A Love Story" were brilliant and invaluable).
I guess some of us on the left are as disappointed in Michael Moore as Michael Moore is in Barack Obama.. Here I'll note that Moore made comments after “Capitalism” was released suggesting that he was much less than a thorough or radical opponent of the system (system) he said (in his movie) was beyond regulatory redemption. On October 7, 2009, for example, Moore told "P"BS’ Charlie Rose that all he really wanted was for the American economic system to return to some of the better “values” he felt it had exhibited in the first twenty-five years after World War II:.
"When people say 'well, if you don’t like capitalism' – or at least the version of capitalism we have right now – 'what do you propose?' my answer is …I’m not suggesting that we have to come up with something brand new. Actually, if we just applied some of the old principles that we used to have….democratic values, in other words where the people have some say in how the economy was run, not just the wealthiest 1 percent, which has more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.” ( “Michael Moore on the Charlie Rose Show” (October 9, 2009), video at http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-in-the-news/michael-moore-charlie-rose-show).
Pretty tepid.
The great Howard Zinn (I apologize for taking the focus off him and onto the dysfunctions of what passes for left culture in the U.S.) was an actual anti-capitalist who called (among other things) for Marxists and left anarchists to realize their common opposition to the cancerous and undemocratic profits system: See: http://www.zcommunications.org/anarchism-and-marxism-by-howard-zinn
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Celebrities
By Green, Chris at Feb 09, 2010 13:26 PM
Speaking of celebrities, I think it is telling that so many celebrities who are not leftist radicals but fairly standard Hollywood liberals appear in "A People Speak." Zinn wrote with such a mild manner that I think he made non-radical liberals more comfortable but at the same time I think there are a alot of people who express admiration for Zinn who really don't understand his radicalism. There are a couple of non-radical liberal acquaintances on my facebook friends list who paid tribute to Zinn when he died and one young lady even allowed that she was very sad but I wonder if either of them have actually read any of his works. I remember an English professor at my undergraduate institution who expressed warm admiration for Zinn but she is a fairly standard liberal. Perhaps "A People's History" is going to become or has already become a book that you read, or pretend to read, if you want to seem sophisticated and part of the counter-culture. Perhaps some people have not read Zinn but have heard that he tells history from the point of view of ordinary Americans and think that it is a very nice thing even if they haven't read much about Zinn's interpretation of specific historical events and phenomenon.
It's not a knock on Zinn but I can't imagine Ben Affleck and Matt Damon getting celebrities together to do a movie about one of Chomsky's books. Zinn probably had more mainstream acceptance than Chomsky because he often wrote in the manner of a kindly Catholic priest and didn't have the level of intellectual fierceness as Chomsky. And Zinn wrote little on Israel-Palestine, which is understandable and not a knock on him.. But if he did write on Israel-Palestine I'm sure he would not have been given a column in The Progressive.
The quote from Zinn at the end of this article demonstrates why Zinn had a certain level of acceptance that Chomsky didn't have. He writes with such a mild manner. He says " I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King.....What would Martin Luther King do? And what would Martin Luther King say?’ And if he only listened to King, he would be a very different president than he’s turning out to be so far." Of course, I think Zinn knew that politics dosen't actually work that way. Substantial progressive change won't come about merely ("if only") when Obama starts paying attention to MLK's radical ideas. But Zinn chose the tactic in that interview of criticizing Obama in rather grandfatherly fashion and some folks might find that manner of speaking more palatable than Chomsky's more blunt appraisal.
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Sorry...
By Street, Paul at Feb 09, 2010 01:58 AM
...I can't read any of the comments under the new system...so did not know whether the first version of my comment went up or not hence the second (or third, i have no idead at this point) one/version. My password is iffy now (it is unclear when and if Im am actually logged in) and I no longer see the "quick edit" function that previously allowed corrections....Still, I assume someone somewhere can read what I wrote (I can't) and that the basic point is clear enough....
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Two problems, possiblty related
By Street, Paul at Feb 09, 2010 01:53 AM
Again my title, verbatim. This also sort of happened with "The Empire's New Clothes." Perhaps just a coincidence but maybe not (I have reason to suspect not).
More importantly, this is not an impressive write up! I'm a little insulted by the superficiality. Please the celebrity attachment: we have to hear of course about Hollywood actor Matt Damon and about the famous author Alice W. and about the "star-studded" nature (so what?) of the cast on the documentary and we have to be told that NC is "world-renowned linguist." Come on. This does not come off well in my opinion. It does not do justice to HZ.
Please do better and be a little more careful on you're title-checks AG and DM (it's starting to look a little creepy) I think these 2 issues I'm raising -- (a) posslby lifting my titles and (b) celebrity attachment and superficiality --- strike me as potentially interrelated.
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Re: Two problems, possiblty related
By McGehee, Michael at Feb 09, 2010 02:07 AM
you know i have heard a lot complaints growing over the recent years of how DN! is becoming too focused on celebrities and leftist intellecutals (professors and such).
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@McGehee
By Street, Paul at Feb 09, 2010 05:26 AM
Michael I'm probably over-paranoid about the titles thanks in part to my many years of exposure to professors (who were constantly lifting stuff in my experience) but yeah....celebrity attachment is really pronounced in this very short obit and that's sort of ironic given HZ's passionate desire to help inform and encourage popular rank and file citizens and working class activism, Nice to see Anthony Arnove cited and quoted though....
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