Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

by John G. Turner

The world notices the passing of very few historians, but Howard Zinn's death yesterday made the headlines for obvious reasons. It's hard for me to think of an historian of Zinn's generation who exerted more influence on the way that Americans view their past.

For several years, I've been using a "dueling banjos" approach in my survey class (explicitly borrowed from Lendor Calder). I assign Zinn's People's History and a diametrically opposed text. Students identify and has out the differences. [I've tried Paul Johnson's History of the American People and Schweikart and Allen's Patriot's History. If anyone has a suggestion of something else to pair with Zinn, I'm all eyes].

The shortcomings of Zinn's book are obvious to me and to many students. For starters, there is hardly any sense of change over time, no recognition of the tremendous material gains for all classes of Americans over the past hundred years. If one cares about American religious history, it's a bit painful to give students a text that only touches on religion in a sympathetic manner by way of the Berrigan brothers. At the same time, I've never assigned a "textbook" that students so readily engage, whether they like Zinn's arguments or not. I am grateful to Howard Zinn for getting so many of my students to take an interest in U.S. History.

The Associated Press had this to say about Zinn on a more personal level:

Professor Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair. An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more interested in persuasion than in confrontation.

I can attest to the latter. Several years ago, one of my classes noticed a rather obvious factual error in People's History. Zinn was trying too hard to make the case that many Americans opposed the Second World War.

Thus, we fired off an email to Zinn:

My undergraduate survey classes have been profitably reading your People's History this semester. We're learning to read all sources critically and have a question about a detail in your book. Can you help us resolve the following?

On p. 418 (2003 edition) you write, "Our of 10 million drafted for the armed forces during World War II, only 43,000 refused to fight. But this was three times the proportion of C.O.'s in World War I."

On p. 371 (WWI): "About 65,000 men declared themselves conscientious objectors and asked for noncombatant service."

How could 43,000 in WWII be a larger proportion than 65,000 in WWI? Our understanding is that more individuals were drafted during the Second World War. Can you help?

The then 84-year-old Zinn promptly wrote back:

Thank you for calling that to my attention. A gross error! I think my absolute figures are right, but what I say about "proportion" is wrong. I don't remember where I got that information but I'll look into it. You can use this as a lesson for your students on how historians can get things wrong!

Best wishes,
Howard Zinn

For a man who received sacks of both positive and negative mail about his work, I found the response extraordinarily gracious and a testimony to a kind and gentle spirit. May we respond similarly to our critics!