Tribute to Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

One of my favorite teachers cum mentor and friend was Howard Zinn. While in my doctoral program at Boston University in the spring semester of 1986, I took an elective with him entitled "The Politics of History." Each student had to develop a project that showed how a particular aspect of history occurred, how it was covered during the time, and then how it should have been covered. It was an eye-opening experience! He subtly guided us, but we each felt we were completely free to give our perspectives.

I took the course because I knew of his past: that he had taught at Spelman, the historically black college for women in Atlanta; that he had supported young people, teenagers and young adults in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as they waged battle against the Jim Crow laws primarily in the South; that he had been an anarchist for a while, but was earnest about the marginalization of American Indians, Latinos, and African Americans historically and contemporaneously; that he had written the vastly popular text, A People's History of the United States, just a few years earlier; and that many people did not like him because of his polemics against the reactionary nature of our political system and the oppression and exploitation endemic to the capitalist system. During a part of his tenure at B.U., he was denied raises and merit pay as his colleagues because of his candor and his progressivism.

One of the attributes I liked most about Zinn was his stick-to-itiveness, i.e., his unwavering commitment to and solidarity with those discriminated against by the structures, processes, and policies of our society and by ignorant, xenophobic individuals afraid of true justice, equity, and peace. He was what is called an infracaninophile: someone who empathizes with the underdog. In creative ways, he maintained this perspective throughout his adult life, writing for the last time in a recent edition of The Nation (February 1, 2010) his captious views on where the Obama administration is headed.

Regardless of where a person is politically or socioeconomically, Howard Zinn is a stellar role model in trying to forge the best possible society and world. As one of the titles of his books declares, "You can't be neutral on a moving train!" Zinn spoke up when others saw unfairness, but had not the will to seek to change it. Sure, he sometimes waxed radical and revolutionary, but he had a bountiful and courageous heart to compel people to beat their swords into plowshares and the spears into pruninghooks and study war no more. Although critical of pacifists, he became increasingly sympathetic to their cause in the face of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. In a very real sense, he was a rare prophet in our times--one who would not mince any words that revealed our inhumanity to other human beings.

Howard Zinn will be sorely and profoundly missed in our public discourse. But there are many of his proteges who must now take up his mantle and legacy of progressive and compassionate leadership before, I dare say, it is too late!