Howard Zinn

Born in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood on December 7, 1922, Howard Zinn ranks among America’s most esteemed political activists and intellectuals. His World War II service as a fighter pilot first stirred his political awareness. After the conflict, he used the G.I. Bill to attend college and earned a master’s degree in history from Columbia University.

Zinn joined the faculty of Spelman College, Georgia’s institution for African-American women, in 1956. While there he took part in Atlanta’s expanding civil rights movement and advised the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Activism supporting civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War cost him his Spelman post in 1963. Boston University placed him on its faculty, where he taught until retirement. Later he served as visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna.

A prolific author, Zinn released A People’s History of the United States in 1980; the volume presented American history from the standpoint of the disenfranchised and sold more than a million copies. He contributed regularly to numerous magazines and wrote several plays about radical political figures from the past. He also lectured frequently on campuses and radio, and the leftist publishing house AK Press issued several recordings of those talks.