Howard Zinn: A Man of Faith

When Zinn was a boy, he realized that poverty was a worldwide problem. He asked adults questions about why some people are poor and others are rich. They told him that people get rich by working hard. He still did not understand, though, because his parents worked very hard as factory workers and they were still very poor. Later, he would understand that his parents would need better jobs to make more money, and they could not get better jobs with their second and seventh grade educations. This would form the base of Zinn’s mission in life: to get people the rights they deserve.

Zinn did not know that this was his mission, though, until after World War II. At twenty-one years old, Zinn volunteered himself to serve his country in the war. He became a bombardier, dropping bombs on German cities that housed Nazi troops. Zinn never stopped to think about what he was doing to the people below him; he just completed his missions as he was told.

“The thing about being in the Air Force and dropping bombs from 35,000 feet is that you don't see anybody, human beings, you don't hear screams, see blood, see mangled bodies.”

Howard Zinn Interview

Zinn remembers one, specific bombing mission clearly. It was within a few weeks of the end of the war, and everyone knew that the war would end very soon. He was briefed from early in the morning, as usual. They told him that they would be bombing the French town of Royan, where a few thousand German soldiers were living, waiting for the war to end. Neither Zinn, nor any of his comrades asked questions at the briefing. No one asked why they were bombing France when the war was almost over and we held all of France. This mission was also, one of the first times that napalm was used in the war.

 

“Then I was in Europe years after that, sometime in the mid-1960s, in Yugoslavia. I ran into a couple from Pilsen. Hesitantly, I told them that I had been in one of the crews that bombed Pilsen. They said, when you finished the streets were full of corpses, hundreds and hundreds of people killed in that raid.”

Howard Zinn Interview

It wasn’t until after the bombing of Hiroshima, that Zinn realized what terrible things he was doing in the war. Zinn began to think about the purpose of war, and he came to believe that there must be better ways to achieve justice in the world. Zinn thought about how much money was spent on war, and how much of a difference it would make if that money was spent on the poor of the world. Zinn knew that something had to be done in the world to prevent so many innocent people from dying in wars and in poverty.

After the war, Zinn came back to America, and looked for a job teaching history. In the 1950’s, he took a job as Chair of the Social Sciences department at Spelmen College, a black college near Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly after he started this job, the Civil Rights Movement erupted near Spelman College. Blacks, including some of Zinn’s students, were demanding equal rights from the government. Howard saw an incredible energy in his students, and he did not want it to be wasted on "on mere academic experiences." Therefore, he became a moderator for many of the small organizations on campus that were working for civil rights. He took these groups to large rallies against racism, and many of the students were arrested.

“The law is made by very limited people…with very specific interests”

You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Zinn was beginning to attract a lot of negative attention from both the government and the heads of Spelman College. The FBI was angry with him because he had written a letter accusing the FBI of supporting racism. Dr. Martin Luther King agreed with Zinn’s letter. Spelman College officials were also getting worried that Zinn was stirring up too much conflict. However, Zinn had faith that all people should be treated equally, so he continued to participate in demonstrations and his students continued to get arrested. Eventually, Spelman fired Zinn because he was putting his faith before his job.

Zinn found another job, however. In the 1960’s he taught history at Boston University. During this time, he led many protests against the United States in Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese decided to release some prisoners of war, they asked for some peace delegates to meet with them before they released the P.O.W.’s. Howard and another peace activist flew over as soon as possible, and met with the communist North Vietnamese. Talking to the prisoners of war, Zinn realized that the American’s presence there was only helping communism spread, because now the non-communists shared an enemy with the communists: the Americans. The soldiers in combat knew many things about the war that the American general public did not know because the government did not tell them.

Zinn believed that Americans should know what actually happens in history, instead of just what the government wants us to know. In 1980, Zinn acted on his beliefs and wrote his most popular book, A People’s History of the United States, which tells American history from the standpoint of the people that experienced it. For example, the Civil Rights Movement is told by blacks who were treated unjustly, not by wealthy white government officials. The book starts in 1492, with some of Christopher Columbus’s journal entries. Columbus does not appear as such a hero when he says that the Native Americans are very nice, so they will be easy to take as slaves. Zinn was not the first to publish the ugly side of Columbus, but he did bring a lot more attention to it, and caused many people to protest Columbus Day. Protestors led Denver to cancel its annual Columbus Day parade, and Berkeley officially changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People Day.

 

“There's a history which is done by rich white men. Not that historians are rich. But the people who publish the textbooks are, the people who control the media, the people who decide what historians to invite on the networks at special moments when they want to call on a historian. The people who dominate the big media networks, they're rich. Not only are the controls of our information rich and white and male, but they then ask that history concentrate on those who are rich and white and male.”

Howard Zinn Interview

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

-George Orwell, one of Zinn's favorite writers

 

Zinn’s faith that all people deserve equal rights has only grown stronger over the years. His faith was so strong that he gave up his job at Spelman College to work for civil rights. He has also been arrested and beaten very severely at protests against the Vietnam War. To be so devoted to a cause that you put it before your safety requires strong faith that what your doing is important. Even today, Howard continues to attend debates, rallies and protests because he believes that all people deserve to live in a safe environment with the same rights that the wealthy enjoy. Today, Howard resides in Auburndale, MA with his supportive wife, who makes a great first editor for his books because she reads popular novels and is not a historian.