Ask the average person to name a historian and chances are the answer will be “Howard Zinn.” Zinn, author of the influential and best-selling A People’s History of the United States, framed history as a continuing struggle between those at the top and a restless public fighting for social justice, economic dignity, personal freedom, and peace.
How influential is Zinn? In 2020, Donald Trump blamed him for teaching “propaganda” meant to make students “ashamed of their own history.” Had Zinn been alive, he might have welcomed the debate, as his work highlighted how American history has often been its own form of propaganda in support of American elites.
In the new biography The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, Dave Zirin provides a compelling look at Zinn’s life and career spotlighting Zinn’s engagement with the social movements of his time. The sports editor at The Nation and columnist at Edge of Sports, Zirin knew Zinn toward the end of the historian’s life, touring with him for public appearances and contributing A People’s History of Sports in the United States to the popular series of People’s Histories following Zinn’s 1980 classic.
Zirin shared his thoughts in a recent interview with Identity Theory Associate Fiction Editor Chuck Augello.
IT: What prompted you to write a biography of Howard Zinn?
Dave Zirin: Well, I'm a sports writer by trade. All my other books have been about sports and politics. I never thought I'd venture out of that niche, but one of the books I wrote was A People's History of Sports in the United States. It was part of the People's History series that was curated by Howard Zinn, who of course is the author of A People's History of the United States. I got to know Howard through that process. Then towards the end of Howard's life, I traveled with him to several places and interviewed him on stage. We really got to know each other.
The more stories he told, I thought, “What we need is a people's history of Howard Zinn," because of how fascinating I found his life to be. It’s like if Forrest Gump was directed by John Sayles. You have this very working-class erudite historian who also happens to be at the apexes of real political friction in this country over the last century. But what really prompted me to write it was the fact that in recent years, a lot of people had been asking me what would Howard say about different issues. Mostly about the Trump White House and this era of reaction that we're living in.
Would Zinn’s famous optimism be thwarted? What does it say that we've reached this point after so many years of protests? People would ask me that question and I don't really believe in answering for people who aren't here to answer for themselves. But I did think that in Howard's life there were tons of lessons for people today to take in about how to weather the difficult times and retain a sense of hope. That's what really pushed me to write the book.
IT: Much of Zinn’s political consciousness was formed during his early years in the New York tenements and working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. What did he learn from those experiences?
Dave Zirin: Well, I think his time in Brooklyn has been underwritten about or not written about at all. Also, the period after World War II: that was a thrill to research. During that time on the Navy Yard, Howard Zinn was very involved with his union. That was his first commitment as well to fighting fascism overseas. It was a military gig to work in that Navy Yard, and if he'd wanted to, he could have spent all of World War II working in the Navy Yard, but he left to become an Army Air Corps Bombardier. But that period in the Navy Yards was a time when he was in a very intense political conversation with every shade of radical who was out there.
In Brooklyn at that time, as one contemporary wrote, you really were thought to be dead from the neck up if you weren't some kind of anarchist, socialist, communist, a radical of some stripe or another. Howard Zinn was able, because of his union work, to have connections to all these different people. He was getting his own political education in addition to finishing up high school and being a voracious reader.
IT: Even before he became a prominent public figure, Zinn caught the attention of the FBI. There’s a long history in the United States of government harassment of left-leaning citizens. How did this affect Zinn?
Dave Zirin: Yes. It's crazy to think about how young he was. He was working full-time while trying to get his PhD at Columbia, married to Roslyn Schechter Zinn, a father to first Myla, and then Jeff, and in the process, he's also the leading activist in the city of a very powerful national organization called the American Veterans Committee. He's speaking on panels all over the city. He was somebody who was very tied into the Black community in New York, speaking, as I write in the book, at rallies against police brutality, particularly against Black vets. That was a huge issue for his chapter of the American Veterans Committee.
All of this work really put him on the radar of the FBI. What the Red Squads wanted was to have Howard Zinn exposed as a Communist. He was never a Communist Party member, but that's what they wanted to hang on him. They wanted him to name names. I read a lot of reports of the times he was accosted by the FBI. It's really a fascinating display of somebody in their late 20s under all sorts of social and political pressure refusing to name names. Saying, "If you want to know about my activities, I will share them. I'm not ashamed of them, but I'm not going to give anybody else's name." It frustrated the FBI to no ends.
They were so convinced that he was some subterranean secret member who was running this American Veterans Committee chapter that J. Edgar Hoover signed off on Howard and Roslyn Zinn being indefinitely imprisoned in case of a national emergency. Remember, this is also the era when the Rosenbergs are on trial and being put to death, and they had two small children. The echo of that must have been so intense in the Zinn home. Even though I got to know Howard, this was a period of his life that he really was not fond of speaking about.
IT: The book is titled The People’s Historian, but it could easily have been called The Activist Historian. Zinn taught at Spelman College at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Besides his teaching, how did Zinn participate in the movement? It seemed like he was acting in a more supportive than leadership role. Can you tell us about it?
Dave Zirin: Absolutely. I think his reasons for it are pretty basic conjecture, but he had this approach to these incredible women at Spelman who were leading both the civil rights movement in the streets and fighting the paternalism on their campus. He never said to them, "Hey, look, I was once one of the leading activists in all of New York City. Let me show you how it's done," but instead put himself in a position of support. He and Ros opened up their apartment for them to have organizing meetings, make signs, make phone calls.
Howard fought the school administration and the school's president, Albert Manley, to make sure these young women had the permission to get off that campus and get into the streets where they wanted to be. In the process, Howard Zinn taught this incredible generation of Black women, people like Alice Walker, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Marian Wright Edelman, and so many more, like Beverly Guy-Sheftall, who I name check in the book. I include a lot of their stories in that chapter, much more than stories about Howard, because I wanted to show that that was really the fruits of his supporting them the way they both asked to be supported, and also needed to be supported.
Instead of imposing himself, particularly in those days, saying, “Well, I'm a white guy from up north who has this cred. This is what we're going to do, and you’re going to listen to me." That was never his approach. I think that's very instructive for today.
IT: I'm going to pitch a movie idea in case you ever talk to Matt Damon again. Instead of The Odyssey, how about a film about Howard and Daniel Berrigan going to North Vietnam to free three POWs at the height of the war? Matt could play Howard, and Ben Affleck could co-star as Father Berrigan.
Dave Zirin: It'd be incredible, but you might have to cast Ben as Howard just because of the height. Because that's a key part of Howard's presentation; he was this tall guy with thick white hair who would come out onto the stage. Affleck's got the hair for it, too. That could actually work really well.
It's so wild in today's period when we think of a peace movement. Let's play a mental game here. If Iran had hostages right now and they asked only representatives of the peace movement in the United States to send representatives over to free the hostages, I think Trump and Pete Hegseth might blast them out of the sky. It wouldn't be tolerated, or more realistically they would imprison them before they could go.
Part of the story is how Lyndon Johnson sabotaged the choreography of the event. But it's just so wild to me that that was the worst that Johnson did and not what I think we would see today, which would be a martial punishment for even thinking of going as an independent body to bring US soldiers home. But that's really the story. People can read about it in the book, but Hanoi said, "We have these hostages and we want a representative of the peace movement." When they asked Zinn and Berrigan, Zinn said, "Well, I guess they think between the two of us, we make one responsible representative of the peace movement."
But the US put him through hell in terms of getting there. It was a rollicking adventure.
IT: Much of Zinn’s activism during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s was in opposition to the Vietnam War. Considering the absence of a strong anti-war movement over the past three decades, despite the US being involved in nearly constant wars of aggression, it’s important to be reminded that the US once did have a strong and widespread peace movement. Howard, during World War II, was a bombardier and was involved in the early use of a napalm-like substance. How did that influence his thinking about war, particularly during Vietnam?
Dave Zirin: It was a combination of that as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that had a huge effect on him because for most of his time in World War II, he felt like he was fighting the just war, the good war. He felt like he was stopping the spread of fascism. But he was strongly affected also by the political conversations he had with people in the Air Corps who were saying to him, this is also really about US imperialism and trying to control the Pacific for decades to come. Don't think we are behaving morally with some of these bombs that we're dropping. That discussion was in the atmosphere, and he leaves World War II an anti-imperialist and even a pacifist at that point in his life.
Of course, with Vietnam, he was very affected by his work in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where a lot of the leading Black activists, people like the young Bob Moses, were making the connection between Vietnam and the civil rights struggle in terms of the priorities of the US government. Also, looking at racism and white supremacy, and their approach both to the Black fighter, the freedom fighters in the South, as well as the carnage and genocide being inflicted on the Vietnamese people. That had a strong effect on him. It dovetailed with his politics, his anti-militarism out of World War II, and his belief in the Black freedom struggle.
All of these things made it so Howard was a first-generation frontline fighter. One of the things that affected him so much was seeing the way those anti-war demonstrations kept getting bigger and bigger until everybody's shoulder to shoulder in the Boston Common. That really did infuse him with a sense that we can fight imperial war in this country and we have an audience that's willing to do that. The book explores his interactions with Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, and his own arrests at protests. These are the truly formative years for the Howard Zinn who I think most of the people reading this will know.
IT: We mentioned Matt Damon earlier. Obviously, A People's History is well known for being in Good Will Hunting, and that really supercharged public awareness, but it was a popular book before then. You write that it has sold around four million copies, which for a history book is stunning.
Dave Zirin: It’s remarkable that a book that came out in 1980 is still being read and taught and discussed. So much has grown out of that book from organizations like the Zinn Education Project, to The Voices of a People's History series, to The People Speak, which was featured on The History Channel. I think the book’s legacy above all else is that it makes the reader feel like they can be part of a tradition where they are the subjects of history and not the objects. That's so at odds with how history is normally taught that I think even to this day it's really bracing to read.
I reread it before doing the book and it really struck me, not just how vivid it is, but also the ways in which it’s not just about this collection of victories, but also how the state can engage in a bloody crackdown every time it looks like progress is on the march. But then it shows how people weather those beat downs and build themselves back. That's what I think is so missing among today's radicals and fighters for a better world. They want to fight, but they don't really see that a better world is possible. Some of that comes from just the despondency of our age.
But if you do have a sense of history, you understand that, as Zinn always argued, we've faced tyranny before. It's often overestimated, if not in the short run, then in the long run.
IT: I was lucky to be at the first performance in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, of Voices of a People's History. I'm a big Kurt Vonnegut fan, and seeing Vonnegut, Howard Zinn, and Patti Smith singing “The People Have the Power” was such a highlight. Before this interview, I asked my friend who was there with me, "Did that really happen? Did I imagine that?" How did those performances come to be?
Dave Zirin: It started with Howard Zinn in conversation with Anthony Arnove, his longtime collaborator, friend, and agent. It's funny, the way Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn met was when Anthony was answering the phones at Seven Stories Press, and Howard was calling because he was mentoring somebody who was behind bars, who was getting out, and he was calling everybody he knew to try to find him work. That's when they first started talking.
Anthony and Howard talked about how the parts of A People's History of the United States that seemed to resonate the most were the speeches that carry the narratives, the people bearing witness to these different struggles or backlashes. They thought, “Why don't we expand the speeches and do a whole volume of the people who are heard in A People's History, but just their words, with little preambles explaining them, but just a book of their exhortations."
As they're putting it together, they came up naturally with, "Well, wouldn't it be great if we could get these performed?" Because Howard also has this lifelong interest and passion for theater. That's when they went about talking to folks, not just famous Hollywood folk, but also people who do spoken word, people folks have never heard of, grassroots musicians, and people who have an expertise in putting on these shows.
It is stunning when you think how you've had famous movie stars, and not just Matt Damon, who grew up at Howard Zinn's knee, but Viggo Mortensen, Kerry Washington, people who were just so deeply affected by Howard’s work. The late James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, for goodness sakes. They all wanted to be associated with Howard Zinn and A People's History of the United States.
IT: The book features a fun story about Viggo Mortenson being stalked by Lord of the Rings fans showing up with hobbit feet. In the Acknowledgments, you credit your sister Annie with giving you a copy of A People’s History of the 20th Century. What was your initial reaction to reading it?
Dave Zirin: It was just the book in that short form, which given my reading attention span at that time, was really smart on her part because there's a very good chance that if she had given me a thick book, it would've, on general principle, gone unread. But I was able to dive in, and after I read that, I immediately read the entirety of the People's History because that's what really hooked me. Like they say in Good Will Hunting, it knocked me on my ass. I would read a little bit of it and then put it down and have to walk around the room. It was affecting me on that much of a visceral level.
Then when I became a sports writer, I just felt completely wired into this idea of A People's History lens. If I'm going to talk about sports, I'm going to talk about it from the perspective of rebel athletes or fans or agitators as opposed to looking at sports from on high. That's the mindset that Zinn gifted several generations with, this idea that we can form our own perspectives and that those perspectives are valid.
IT: You knew Howard personally, you did appearances with him, particularly toward the end of his life. Was there anything that surprised you during your research or in your interviews with people who knew him?
Dave Zirin: Five million percent what surprised me the most was that Howard Zinn and his family were at the Peekskill riots, the Peekskill concert of Paul Robeson that never happened because the people who came up to see Paul Robeson, who was such a radical icon, were attacked by the police, the American Legion, and right-wing vigilantes. Howard Zinn and his wife Ros and their baby Myla barely got out of there with their lives. Howard was somebody who was never shy about talking about his experiences in the movements over his life, but he never talked about that, ever. I found it out in my research.
I also found out, thanks to the historians at the FBI, that as soon as Howard and Ros got back to New York, they were immediately in several different solidarity groups with the people who were attacked in Peekskill to both get justice for the assaulted and also get their medical care paid for. That whole part of his life just struck me so strongly.
IT: I had heard of the Peekskill riots, but never had an appreciation for the true horror of it until I read your chapter. You conjure it well. Anyone looking to understand where we are now, historically, needs an understanding of the past. A People’s Historian is a valuable contribution to the conversation.
More About Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation magazine, their first sports editor in 160 years of existence. The author of eleven books on the politics of sports, including most recently The Kaepernick Effect and the NAACP Image Award nominated The John Carlos Story, Zirin has also worked as an advisor for filmmakers and documentarians such as Ang Lee and Ken Burns. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin has been a frequent guest on ESPN, MSNBC, and CNN.
Further Reading: Identity Theory Interviews With Howard Zinn
