by ERIC MANN
Howard Zinn, a dear and old friend of many–including me–died today in Santa Monica at the age of 87. He died still doing work he knew needed to be done. It is so fortunate that The People Speak, the documentary Howard narrated based on his classic A People’s History of the United States, was completed and made its world premiere before Howard’s passing. That project had been in the works for almost a decade and it meant so much for Howard to be able to see another part of his vast legacy come to fruition.
I met Howard Zinn in 1967 when I was a New England Regional Organizer for Students for a Democratic Society and he was a young, charismatic professor at Boston University. I became close to him and his wife Roz, who was also a significant figure in the movement at the time. I initiated the “Anti-Military Campaign” at BU demanding an end to the ROTC program on campus and to the BU Overseas Program, through which BU embedded itself with the US military apparatus. When I came out of prison in 1971, Howard and I approached the Boston Globe with the idea of it having its first explicitly left op-ed column, which we named “Left Field Stands.” For more than a year, Howard and I alternated Fridays and wrote some of the most popular and radical op-ends to appear in a mainstream paper. We were so popular and successful that the Globe fired Howard and then me. As I say, we both lived through the experience but it was a loss to the movement.
Just last month, I had the good fortune to interview Howard on my radio show, Voices from the Frontlines (on Pacific station KPFK 90.7 FM, streaming live on the web at www.kpfk.org). I am glad that I approached the interview as a retrospective on Howard’s work and a view of his future work. We talked about Howard’s own role in history; we talked about A People’s History and The People Speak at some length.
I’ve linked below to the interview on the Strategy Centers’ website, www.thestrategycenter.org and hope that you find it helpful and moving. Note Howard’s great sense of humor and irony, his vibrant and powerful speaking voice, and his high hopes for The People Speak to reach out to an even larger audience than the incredible People’s History, with 2 million books sold so far.
Finally, as a footnote, it is commendable that so many of the most militant anti-racist whites are Jewish, as Howard (and I) are. When I was at BU, the key to my organizing was the opportunity to guest lecture at 500-person classes taught by Howard and another professor, Murray Levin. With Howard and Murray’s blessing, I spoke about Revolution and SDS 101. Levin, another faculty giant at the time, was Jewish–as were civil rights martyrs Mickey Schwerner and Andy Goodman, who were killed in 1964 with Black Mississippi native James Chaney. The historic and powerful relationship between Blacks and Jews in US Left history is an under-reported and interesting footnote to a far broader history–but one, with the passing of Howard Zinn, that is still worth noting.
(Submitted by reader)