aaa-John+White-Civic+Hero

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 * Howard Zinn: An Inspiring Life **

**[|Howard Zinn-Civic Hero]** (This link may be used in case YouTube restricts the video due to their erroneous identification of the accompanying music)

I can trace my intense, almost obsessive, interest in history back to a research project I was assigned in the fifth grade. My radicalism (and the accompanying propensity to question authority) developed more slowly, and I cannot identify any single event or turning point which redefined my worldview into what it is today. However, the two-radicalism and history- have always gone hand in hand. This fact no doubt explains why I hold the late, great Dr. Howard Zinn in such high esteem. For years I have seen history, all too often, as the study of the defeat and oppression of the masses. But Dr. Zinn was a man sprung from the masses, as well as a historian dedicated to recounting the victories of the down-trodden along with the injustices meted out by those in authority. The life that Dr. Zinn lived and the work that he left behind have helped inspire me to see that history can contain not only the victories of the down-trodden masses, but also the tools to empower us against future oppression as well. Howard Zinn was born in grinding poverty in New York. Growing up he lived with his parents and three brothers in a secession of tenements, many of which did not have heat or hot water even in the winter months. His father had only a fourth grade education, and was all but illiterate. He worked as a waiter, and was an active union member. Zinn’s mother had been educated to the seventh grade, but was considered the brains of the family and guided them through the uncertainties of growing up as children of the urban poor during the Great Depression. Knowing their son’s love of reading, the couple saved enough to buy young Howard a set of Dickens novels which became an early inspiration. The images of poverty reminiscent of his own situation stirred something within the boy, helping him to see the widespread nature of his plight but also the fact that others were decrying the system which perpetuated it. At the age of seventeen Howard Zinn attended a demonstration with some neighborhood communists. He was not entirely sure of the cause, but thought that it seemed to be vaguely a good thing. This was to be a turning point for the young man. He was among many protestors to be clubbed into unconsciousness by the police that day, and it showed him that the police and other powers that be are (most often) __not__ neutral. Thus, by the time Howard went to work at a shipyard after completing school he was already a committed radical. In his three years at the shipyard he worked hard within the union, as well as organizing those young workers who were not allowed to join. After three years in the shipyard Zinn left to join the Air Force during World War II. Though draft exempt (the shipyard was producing valuable war materials by this time), Zinn had a strong desire to fight fascism as a politically aware young person. After receiving training as a gunner, bombardier, and pilot he flew bombing missions over much of the European theater throughout the War. As fate would have it one of his last missions was to involve the first use of napalm in the European theater. The mission was flown against a small French town occupied by several thousand German soldiers. Though the mission did not seem special at the time, Zinn later found out that civilians had been among the casualties of that raid. This made him question for the first time the true goodness of what he had previously viewed as a just war. Following the war Zinn returned to the States and began furthering his education once again, though he and his young wife now had two children and were living on meager wages in a New York housing project. He worked in a warehouse loading trucks until midnight to feed his family while attending graduate school at Columbia University during the day. In 1956, before he had even completed his PhD, Howard Zinn was offered the position of Chair of History and Social Sciences at Spellman College in Atlanta. Though initially opposed to working in the South, Zinn took the position. He was interested to see what a southern black college would be like, but was primarily motivated by his need for a salaried position. His time at Spellman would prove to be short-lived, but inspiring. Rather unexpectedly, he found himself quickly becoming involved in the Civil Rights movement. He helped activist students organize demonstrations and sit-ins, and became involved with SNCC. Zinn was always looking for ways to involve clubs and organizations on campus in the growing social movement around them and in the end it would cost him his position. The lessons Zinn learned from the Civil Rights battle and the momentum it gave him helped launch him into the protest movement against the Vietnam War almost immediately. He continued to be a powerful activist up until his recent death, supporting such efforts as the 1999 WTO protests and the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Howard Zinn was a man who was not afraid to face danger head on if it meant the advancement of his cause. This could mean danger to his career, to his freedom, or even to his life. After helping his students organize protest actions at Spellman College, Zinn was fired for his support of increased student rights within the College itself. He then told Beacon Press that he would not write a book about the NAACP for them, since he felt that the real heart of the Civil Rights movement was SNCC (about whom he would later write //__The New Abolitionists__//). He once gave a speech against the Vietnam War outside the hotel where the trustees of Boston University were voting on his tenure, despite his growing reputation as a rabble-rouser after his students requested it of him. He later refused to cross the picket lines of a clerical workers’ strike at the University, instead teaching his classes outside in solidarity with the working class struggle he saw before him. His dedication sometimes put him at odds with the administration, culminating in a situation where the President of Boston University said that he would only give Dr. Zinn teaching assistants if he cut his classes down to eighty students. Zinn refused, and continued to teach four-hundred students per semester without help. He was known to say that historians could never be passive, because to be passive was to become a collaborator with the injustices of one’s own time. Zinn also believed that the best way to overcome those injustices was to learn from the mistakes and the victories of the past. In 1968 Dr. Zinn walked out of a lecture at BU to meet with members of the US peace movement. What he could not know was that he was about to become one of the peace movement’s representatives traveling to North Vietnam as a gesture of good faith to secure the release of the first three captured American airmen. He and two other committed activists flew into Saigon during the Tet Offensive and found themselves unable to get to Hanoi for a week.

Eventually the three reached North Vietnam by way of a non-governmental plane and a stopover in Laos. Once there, they were able to secure the release of the prisoners while being bombed on a daily basis by American planes. After the release took place, however, the US government violated its agreement with the peace movement that the airmen should be returned to the US by civilian transport (a condition specifically requested by the North Vietnamese). To protest this Zinn and his comrades sent a telegram to President Johnson, which also questioned the validity of the Johnson administration’s public statements about the lack of willingness on the part of the North Vietnamese to negotiate for peace. To drive the point home they also held a press conference, at which Howard Zinn made it clear that he had personally spoken with the North Vietnamese Premier about the issues of prisoner release and cease-fire negotiation and received information contrary to that being released by the administration. While these actions certainly show an understanding of the growing importance of television to the American public and a willingness to use more traditional methods in order to strike directly at the heart of a matter, it was Dr. Zinn’s writing which truly made him stand out. He published numerous books directly related to the social struggles he helped champion, as well as others more generally about history, and the history and methods of social struggle. However, by far his most famous work was __A People’s History of the United States.__ The book was an attempt to retell American history from the bottom up. It sought to capture the viewpoint of those who suffered at the hands of the ruling classes in each successive period, and it was revolutionary. From page one the book questioned the “accepted truth” about American history, portraying stark examples of social inequality and racial prejudice all the way back to the revolution. Outcry was immediate. Zinn was derided by many professional historians and his book was never reviewed in professional journals. But that did not stop him from publishing other works, including a series of plays full of social messages and political satire. These works were inspired by Zinn’s own personal heroes, various social and political theorists and activists. The theater was another new method for expressing his opinions about social justice, and proved to be one which Zinn enjoyed immensely. One final story must be told in order to illustrate Dr. Zinn’s ability to adapt important mediums and traditions around him to his cause(s). While in North Vietnam, he attended a meeting in a tunnel system north of Hanoi. At the end of the accompanying meal people stood up for a traditional singing of songs. The North Vietnamese requested that one of the Americans sing a song of their struggle, or of their culture, as part of this traditional interchange. Howard Zinn stood up, and in an effort to further bridge the gap between the two sides, sang “America the Beautiful” in front of several thousand North Vietnamese soldiers. This gesture not only demonstrates great personal courage, but also a profound cultural sensitivity coupled with a keen intellect The example this amazing man sets is indeed an inspiring one. Attempting to have such an impact, to accomplish so much as he did is a daunting prospect. But it is also inspiring to see that one person //can// do so much, //can// have such an effect, even in the face of the legitimized authority of the day. The image of an acknowledged and celebrated academic as a powerful and vocal activist fighting for social justice in his own time is a powerful one, and one which should not be forgotten by the generations who follow him.

** Intent ** Using the 2004 film documentary version of Dr. Zinn’s autobiography //__You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train__// as a baseline, I tried to write as concise an essay as possible without leaving out too terribly much of his long and distinguished life. Obviously there is far too much material to cover in such a short period, but I tried to give biographical highlights along with accounts of some of the events in Dr. Zinn’s life which I have found most inspiring. Still, at the end of the day the point of this project was to discuss novel uses of various media, so I endeavored to give strong examples of his ability to adapt the mediums around him as well.

** Steps Taken ** Dr. Howard Zinn has long been one of my personal heroes. As such, I was already fairly familiar with his life when I approached this project. In order to refresh myself with some of the details, I (re)watched the documentary mentioned about. This film, directed by Deb Ellis and narrated by Matt Damon, was an excellent resource because it packs a great deal of information into a small amount of time and does not require the viewer to read (or reread) Dr. Zinn’s excellent, but lengthy, works. The images used in this essay, and the accompanying video, were acquired from Google images. Dr. Zinn is fairly well known, so there were quite a number to choose from. The audio for the video was recorded on a digital voice recorder and then mixed with the music in Audacity.

** Adaptations ** I modified the text of my essay several times in order to ensure that it remained clear and on message. My goal was not simply to demonstrate that Dr. Zinn was a Civic Hero, but also to show why he is a hero to radicals such as myself. The choice of music (and music volume) to accompany the video was a deliberate one. The fact that the song is heavily dependant upon lyrics would generally make it undesirable for use in this type of circumstance. However, I chose to stick with this song for two reasons. First of all, the song really strikes right at the heart of my message about Dr. Zinn. He was a man who believed that the people should always have their say. Second, I thought that I could convey an artist message by allowing the lyrics to compete with my own voice-over to some degree. The voice of the singer(s) represent the voices of the seldom heard masses who Dr. Zinn championed and also the voices of all those throughout history who have challenged authority on behalf of the common people, only to be silenced or killed before they were able to attain the recognition that Dr. Zinn developed. The effect is mildly distracting, I admit, but I am pleased with the way it flows together. Originally I had planned to read the entire text of my essay for the voice-over, but this proved impractical for several reasons. First, I was not (originally) able to figure out how to embed the video, and thus the reader would have been unable to follow along without losing sight of the video itself. Second, and far more importantly, the audio recording of the entire text was extremely long (over twelve minutes) and the sound quality of this was rather poor (despite numerous noise removal efforts). Thus, it was simpler to write a condensed script for re-recording. The final hurdle on my way to creating this video took the form of a glitch for which I have no explanation. When I transferred the audio file from my desktop to my laptop (my desktop has an old and barely functional version of Windows Movie Maker) it //changed//. I listened to the file from beginning to end on both Audacity and my usual MP3 player program (Microsoft Zune) and everything was clear and clean. But when I added it to my video a segment had been duplicated, tacked straight on to the end of my voice-over, with the music still behind it. I was unable to fix this issue, so I used Windows Movies Maker’s internal tools to change the end point of the audio to the very second my voice-over ended and re-recorded the end of the song which concludes the video (without accompanying voice-over). This was just a little choppy, but it solved the problem without having to re-record and remix the entire audio file, which may or may not have resolved the issue anyway. In the end I made the decision not to include any video clips from the documentary to my own video because I did not find one that really and truly spoke to the topic of this project: civic heroes who made use of new media. There were plenty of good quotes by Dr. Zinn, but nothing that really grabbed me in the context of this project. I felt that these quotes would be interesting, but might also distract from the overall focus of the piece.