Howard Zinn
Zinn was brought up in a blue-collar immigrant family in Brooklyn, worked in the Brooklyn shipyards, and flew bombing missions in Europe during World War II, an experience that shaped his opposition to war. Zinn was a B-17"Bombardier (air force) bombardier with the 490th Bomb Group, and in April, 1945 he participated in the napalm bombing of Royan, France, which was occupied by German troops. Nine years later, Zinn visited Royan, examining documents and interviewing residents, and wrote an account of the bombing of Royan, which was published in his book The Politics of History, and is also included in The Zinn Reader.
After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill, graduating with a B.A. in 1951 and Columbia University, where he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science. His doctoral dissertation LaGuardia in Congress was a study of Fiorello LaGuardia's congressional career. It favorably depicts LaGuardia representing "the conscience of the twenties" as he fought for public power, the right to strike, and the redistribution of wealth by taxation. "His specific legislative program," Zinn wrote, "was an astonishingly accurate preview of the New Deal." It was published by the Cornell University Press for the American Historical Association.
In 1956, Zinn was appointed chair of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College (now Atlanta University Center, Spelman College) a school for black women in Atlanta, where he participated in the Civil Rights movement. Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Of his experiences at Spelman, Zinn says, "Those seven years at Spelman College are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me."
Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd at Spelman and mentored young student activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. A tenured professor, Zinn was fired in June 1963 after siding with some students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta.
In the early 1960s, Zinn wrote frequently about the historic struggle for Civil Rights, both as a participant and historian. and in 1963–64, he took a year off from teaching to write SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique.
In 1964, he joined the faculty at Boston University where he taught history and civil liberties until 1988. He was a leading critic of the Vietnam War. Zinn's diplomatic visit to Hanoi with Rev. Daniel Berrigan during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 resulted in the return of three American airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun.
Daniel Ellsberg entrusted "The Pentagon Papers" to Zinn (and others) before they were finally published in The New York Times. Called as an expert witness in Ellsberg's criminal trial, Zinn was asked to explain to the jury the story of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from World War II to 1963. Zinn discussed that history for several hours. Later he reflected on his time before the jury. "I explained there was nothing in the papers of military significance that could be used to harm the defense of the United States, that the information in them was simply embarrassing to our government because what was revealed, in the government's own interoffice memos, was how it had lied to the American public.… The secrets disclosed in the Pentagon Papers might embarrass politicians, might hurt the profits of corporations wanting tin, rubber, oil, in far-off places. But this was not the same as hurting the nation, the people." Ellsberg was acquitted.
Howard Zinn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Roslyn in the United States. The couple have two children, Myla and Jeff, and five grandchildren. Roslyn is an artist and editor who has a role in editing all of Howard's books.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#Biography
Among his many books, Zinn is best known for A People's History of the United States, a detailed work presenting American history through the eyes of ordinary people struggling to improve their lives, including striking workers, Native Americans, African-American slaves, women, African-Americans struggling against racism and for Civil Rights, and others whose stories are not often told. Since its publication in 1980, "A People's History" has been assigned reading both as a high school and college textbook, and has sold well over a million copies, becoming one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy.
When Matt Damon, his mother, and brother moved next door to the Zinns in West Newton, MA, the families became friends, and the Zinns sometimes sat with the Damon boys. After Damon became an actor, he included a reference to A People's History in his film Good Will Hunting, and read the latter half of People's History for an audiobook. People's History was also referenced in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show The Sopranos.
Some Books by Howard Zinn: La Guardia in Congress, 1959 The Southern Mystique, 1954 SNCC: The New Abolitionists, 1964 New Deal Thought (editor), 1965 Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, 1967 Disobedience and Democracy, 1968 The Politics of History, 1970 The Pentagon Papers: Critical Essays (editor), 1972 Postwar America, 1973 Justice in Everyday Life (editor), 1974 A People's History of the United States, 1980
Web sites for Zinn:
Zinn's ZNet Home page