While Howard Zinn taught at Boston University, the administration began reporting male students’ grades to the Selective Service System, which contributed to determining their draft status. In an undated letter (probably in 1966), Zinn said that he would… Read More

By Carl Mirra The 2020 U.S. presidential election has liberals and reactionaries alike unearthing “scare words” like socialism in response to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Such words should have been buried in 1991 with the end of… Read More

 On April 24, 1968, Howard Zinn introduced organizer Ella Baker at a dinner honoring her work. Zinn described Baker as “one of the most consequential and yet one of the least honored people in America.” Baker addressed… Read More

In June 2018, Tiyo Attallah Salah-El (Sept. 13, 1932 – June 8, 2018) died inside Pennsylvania’s Dallas State Correctional Institution. Salah-El was a musician, scholar, and prison abolitionist who founded the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons in 1995…. Read More

Patricia Marx Interviews Howard Zinn | WNYC Radio Recorded in the 1960s (estimate 1964-1965 based on transcript), Patricia Marx sits down with historian Howard Zinn to discuss his books, SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique. Zinn describes… Read More

In 1974, anti-nukes activist Sam Lovejoy wrote to Howard Zinn, asking Zinn to testify at his upcoming September 17 trial as an expert on civil disobedience. Earlier that year in February, Lovejoy toppled a weather tower that was… Read More

In July 2010, the FBI declassified their 243-page file on Howard Zinn, dating back to 1949 (read summaries of files). The first recorded contact with Zinn is this report filed four years later on November 25, 1953. Two FBI… Read More

This 1964 memo from Howard Zinn to Bob Moses (a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) outlined a plan to minimize violence in Mississippi for the upcoming Freedom Summer, when hundreds of volunteers would be arriving to help… Read More

We share this letter from the Howard Zinn Papers, housed at New York University’s Tamiment Library. Pete Seeger wrote to Zinn in 2006, asking for a book recommendation on Rutherford B. Hayes. The letter reads: Dear Howard—I’m sure… Read More

In this letter dated June 3, 1968, Howard Zinn replies to an inquiry from Grace Hoag asking about the “communist manipulation of demonstrations.”  Zinn defends the integrity of young people “who are too intelligent to be led astray.” From the archives of… Read More