Category: Featured News

From the Archives: “A Few Cryptic Notes on Power and Powerlessness”

By Howard Zinn. From the Archives. Circa 1976.
From Howard Zinn's folder of "Course Syllabi: 'Introduction to Political Theory,' 1968-1987" in the "Boston University" series housed at New York University is this list of talking points on "Vulnerability of the Powerful" and "Power of the Powerlessness." Published with permission of the Howard Zinn Revocable Trust.
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The Optimism of Uncertainty

By Howard Zinn, 2004
"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."
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Columbus and the Lens of History

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 inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history.”
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Disturbing the War

In "Speech Against the Vietnam War, Boston Common," given on May 5, 1971, Howard Zinn said, "They’ll say we’re disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war. For two weeks, for two weeks we have not let the country forget about this war. The veterans in their ways, the mass meetings in their way, the disrupters in their way . . . and we must continue disturbing the war and the makers of the war."
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Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary | HowardZinn.org

Blaming Outside Agitators

In this excerpt from the autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn illustrates how Spelman students organized to petition for social change at their institution and the administration's response. Zinn writes,
"When students begin to defy established authority it often appears to besieged administrators that 'someone must be behind this,' the implication being that young people are incapable of thinking or acting on their own."
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Archive Notes: Howard Zinn’s Warmth, Compassion, and Humanizing of History

"In 2022–2023, I had the opportunity to spend three full weeks going through the Howard Zinn Papers housed at New York University’s Tamiment Library. . . . Being able to focus intensely on his correspondence crystallized how Zinn’s warmth, humor, and compassion draws in people who run across many segments of the population, and how he was a connector of people; he connected people to have the opportunities to tell their stories with those who could amplify them."
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Image: Howard Zinn in his office by Ted Polumbaum/Newseum.