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Sunday 26 August 2012
On the late Howard Zinn’s 90th Birthday: A new biography gives insight into his life and activism

The book is more about Zinn’s activism, organizing, and protest than his writing, however. Ardently averse to the stodgy academic, Zinn was arrested multiple times during direct actions in desegregation and civil rights organizing in the south. His regular arrests and organizing, as well as his subversive teaching style, caused constant clash with both his major tenures, Spelman (a black women’s college in Atlanta), and Boston College. While his later time in Boston was marked by a malicious conservative university president denouncing him at every turn (and once accusing him of trying to set a university building on fire), his clashes during his first position are almost more interesting. While Spelman obviously pushed for improvement in the socioeconomic standing of Southern black communities, the college did not advocate breaking the law. At one point, the president of Spelman accuses Zinn of a sexual relationship with a student, on the basis of giving her a ride. It’s under this sort of scrutiny and fear that Zinn continued to break the law in the name of social justice, and remain an ardent radical in spite of the benefits he would have received from compromising as a fair weather liberal.

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