Howard Zinn

Professor Emeritus/Author/Writer/Historian

Host: Basima Farhat

Previously Aired On: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 – Listen to the Show!
 

Howard Zinn is one of the country’s most beloved and respected historians, the author of numerous books and plays, and a passionate activist for radical change. Zinn has placed himself at the center of the most important historical moments of the last thirty years, during which he has been admired as a writer and an important political and moral voice.

At the age of 18, Zinn was a shipyard worker; at 21 an Air Force bombardier. Both experiences helped shape a radical impulse, an opposition to war, and a passion for history. After getting his Ph.D. from Columbia University in history, he taught at Spelman College, where he worked with young Civil Rights activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Zinn led anti-war protests, went to Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan and testified in his friend, Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers trial. Zinn’s politically engaged life brought him into many arenas – imprisonment for civil disobedience, fights for open debate in universities, and activist work from the Vietnam era to the present.

The stories of the people and events that inspire his faith in the possibility of historic change are woven through his talks as he discusses the need for a critical understanding of our history and the daily events which shape all of our lives.

Zinn is the author of numerous books and plays including the classic, A People’s History of the United States and the newly-released companion volume Voices of a People’s History.Other Zinn titles include Terrorism and War, Declarations of Independence, Artists in Times of War, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times,

The Zinn Reader, Emma and Marx in Soho. Zinn is also the subject of a new documentary film – “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” – that is already garnering critical and public acclaim.

‘The People Speak’ – a new film based on Zinn’s seminal book A People’s History of the United States and Voices of A Peoples’s History, is a documentary featuring musical performances by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Eddie Vedder and performances by Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh, Sean Penn, Rosario Dawson, Don Cheadle, and many others. “The People Speak”, brings to life the extraordinary history of ordinary people who built the movements that made the United States what it is today — ending slavery and Jim Crow, protesting war and the genocide of Native Americans, creating unions and the eight hour work day, advancing women’s rights and gay liberation, and struggling to right wrongs of the day.

September 1st, 2009 --Previous Guests--, Howard Zinn | 11 comments