In the 1960s, Howard Zinn, along with Ella Baker, served as advisers to SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. On this 50th anniversary year of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we revisit Zinn’s first-hand account from Selma’s Freedom Day in 1963. “The idea was to bring hundreds of people to register to vote, hoping that their numbers would decrease fear. And there was much to fear,” Zinn writes.

The following excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Zinn’s autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train and is followed by related resources about Selma’s voting rights campaign, Freedom Day, and SNCC.

December 30 is the anniversary of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo being indicted in 1971 for releasing the Pentagon Papers. The papers were part of a 7,000-page, top secret history of the U.S. political and military involvement in… Read More

The following is an excerpt from “Surprises,” Chapter 19 of A People’s History of the United States to highlight Native American resistance during the 1960s and 70s. As Howard Zinn states, “Never in American history had more movements for change… Read More

For Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we feature an excerpt from Chapter One of A People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn describes why he tells the story of Columbus’s arrival “from the viewpoint of the Arawaks” and “the… Read More

Alison Kysia • Zinn Education Project • November 18, 2013
Since the death of historian Howard Zinn in 2010, a number of scholars and politicians have targeted Zinn’s work in an effort to undermine his influence among educators.

The following essay was presented at the Howard Zinn Read-In held at Purdue University on November 5, 2013. This is a condensed version of a chapter on Zinn in the book, On Doing History from the Bottom Up… Read More

Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ attempt to censor Zinn’s classic ‘A People’s History’ backfires, sparks ongoing interest in late historian’s work. By Andrea Germano In organizing a Howard Zinn read-in at Purdue University, students have cultivated what is… Read More

By Bill Bigelow • Common Dreams • July 18, 2013
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, one of the country’s most widely read history books, died on January 27, 2010. Shortly after, then-Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels got on his computer and fired off an email to the state’s top education officials: “This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.”

Mitch Daniels, as an unconventional choice to become Purdue University’s president, has repeatedly pledged his strong commitment to academic freedom. And many professors — including some who had questioned the wisdom of appointing a governor as university president… Read More

A new book is available that engage the various complexities and tensions present throughout Howard Zinn’s work and subject them to a 21st century assessment. It is edited by Stephen Bird, Adam Silver, and Joshua Yesnowitz. Here is… Read More

This special edition came about after scholars presented and discussed perspectives on the important influences of Howard Zinn to education, history, and citizenship at the 2010 Midwest Peace and Justice Summit in Indianapolis. As the editors explain in… Read More

Last week, the Tucson Unified School District eliminated a popular Mexican American Studies program in local high schools that, in a short period of time, had done a lot of good.. . .When an outside audit gave the… Read More

September 16, 2010—The writer and film maker Paul Laverty was asked recently why he and director Icíar Bollaín dedicated his new film “Even the Rain (Tambien La Lluvia),” set in Bolivia and starring Gael Garcia Bernal, to the… Read More

Don’t Mourn, Organize Celebrate the remarkable life and legacy of Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) by organizing a community screening of The People Speak documentary or hosting a reading of Voices of a People’s… Read More

By Matthew Rothschild • The Progressive • December 27, 2010

I picked up my Sunday Times yesterday morning and saw that the magazine section was doing its annual obituary section, “The Lives They Lived.”

I expected to find Howard Zinn in there, one of the most towering leftwing intellectuals in America of the last 50 years.

But he was nowhere in sight.

Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, turns 23 in jail Friday. The Daily Beast’s Denver Nicks, in an exclusive interview with Manning’s attorney, reports on his solitary confinement,… Read More

In July 2010, the FBI released a 243-page file on Howard Zinn. The release describes the historian as “radical.” The documents show the bureau taking an active interest in Zinn since the late 1940s, when he was a… Read More

In this world of war and injustice, how does a person manage to stay socially engaged, committed to the struggle, and remain healthy without burning out or becoming resigned or cynical?

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

Author on Air • January 19, 2010
In early January of 2010, the Zinn Education Project joined with HarperCollins, publisher of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States, to sponsor an “Ask Howard” online radio interview, and invited teachers from around the country to participate. Sixty teachers and students submitted written questions to Professor Zinn. The Jan. 19 interview was conducted by Rethinking Schools Curriculum Editor Bill Bigelow. Below is the full audio recording, followed by excerpts from that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Bill Moyers Journal • December 11, 2009
“I have confidence in the future. You know why? You have to be patient. Farmworkers were at one point in as helpless a position as the labor movement is today. But as Cesar Chavez said, we learned that you have to organize. And it takes time, it takes patience, it takes persistence.”