Remembering Howard Zinn, the People’s Historian

By Adel – PeaceMaker

January 29, 2010

I am deeply saddened to hear that an American Historian and activist Howard Zinn, passed away on Wednesday, January 27, 2010. It is a big Loss to all of humanity. Rest in peace Mr. Zinn, I will keep seeing history from the point of view of its victims.

The author of a bestseller, A People's History of the United States, which gave a social progressives view of American history, died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn told the Associated Press.

Zinn wrote more than 20 books and his plays have been produced around the world, but it is for A People's History of the United States, first published in 1980, which the historian is best known. The book provides a view of American history from the arrival of Christopher Columbus – who Zinn charges with genocide – to Bill Clinton's first term.

"My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality," wrote Zinn in the bestselling book. "But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all) – that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth."

Zinn was a shipyard worker at age 18, later joining the air force during the Second World War. His experiences shaped his opposition to war. He received a host of honors, most recently the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian award from New York University for embodying "a vision of peace, persistence in purpose, and inspirational action".

The Zinn Education Project posted on its website. "At 87, he continued to inform and inspire in his presentations across the country, radio interviews, essays, and film-making."