Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (100 page)

Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew
bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now
points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at
Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became
involved in the Civil rights movement, which he participated in as an adviser
to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and chronicled, in his
book
SNCC: The New Abolitionists
. Zinn collaborated with historian
Staughton Lynd and mentored a young student named Alice Walker. When he was
fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to
Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

He is perhaps best known for
A People’s History of the United
States
, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels
are outside of the political and economic establishment.

The
biography is an understatement, to say the least. After his passing, dozens of
intellectuals, musicians, artists, and entertainers shared their perspective on
this influential man which were posted on Zinn’s website.

Throughout,
he reminded us of the history of social change in this country, and kept coming
back to the essential lessons that it seems we so often forget or need to learn
anew. That change comes from below. That progress comes only with struggle.
That we cannot rely on elected officials or leaders. That we have to rely on
our collective self-activity, social movements, protest. That change never
happens in a straight line, but always has up and downs, twists and turns. That
there are no guarantees in history.

But
Howard added a distinctive element to these arguments by embodying the
understanding that the process of struggle, the shared experience of being part
of work alongside and for others, is the most rewarding, fulfilling, and
meaningful life one can live. The sense of solidarity he had with people in
struggle, the sense of joy he had in life, was infectious.—Anthony Argrove

He
was a true and constant source of inspiration for myself and countless
others. . . . For me, he was the true embodiment of hope
. . . and a living reminder to keep that hope alive.—Eddie Vedder

Back in World War II, Mr. Zinn was a bombardier in planes that
dropped napalm including during a raid over a town in France called Royan.
After the war, his sensitivities horrified, Zinn returned to Royan on the
ground and interviewed survivors, which included French civilians.
For sixty years, this Army veteran spoke out against all wars, from Vietnam to
Iraq, and others, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Indonesian, African
and Chinese assaults.
Howard Zinn did not choose his injustices. No matter where they came from, he
was in opposition. In a poignant tribute of “thank yous” to his regular
columnist, Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine, wrote “Thank
you, Howard Zinn, for being a Jew who dared to criticize Israel’s oppression of
the Palestinians, early on.”—Ralph Nader

One
could fill volumes on the legacy of Howard Zinn and the struggles he accepted
as necessary for his fellow citizens. His greatest gift was a new paradigm on
the teaching of history.

Zinn
believed that history belongs to everyone, not just the wealthy, powerful, and
elite. In addition, he preached that being a teacher of history meant
something. It was not enough to spew lists of facts and dates and pretend to be
an objective bystander, as most of us believe the study of history to be. It
seems hard to imagine a lesson on the Holocaust that asks students “how they
feel” about what happened. A great evil befell millions of people, and yet
historians today, for the most part (I’m looking at you, Iran, and your
Holocaust deniers) recognize the horrors of genocide committed against the Jews
during World War II. But for some reason, as the past fades through
generations, the events of the times become obscured by the cloud of
subjectivity. Today there is a strong debate about the role Columbus played in
Western history. Historians and nationalists of both the United States and
Italy (see “Columbus Day Parade” in any major American city) claim he was a
brave, courageous man who helped to establish colonies in North America and the
subsequent birth of the United States. Seen from this perspective one might
argue that Hitler was a brave, courageous man who played a foil to the modern
democratic model of government and gave birth to the American superpower.

Because
you have been inundated with the swelling of Columbian pride every October, I
will spare you the common perspective taught in most elementary school
classrooms. Rather, indulge me as I share other insights into the life of
Christopher Columbus.

While
it is true that Columbus did not invent slavery, he took slaves from the New
World almost as soon as he landed, with the blessing of the Catholic Church. He
wrote, “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves
that can be sold.” The Europeans did not see the natives as people and
therefore treated them like cattle. As it has done throughout history, the
Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the practice as their coffers filled with
gold. Lest you think I have a burning vendetta against the Church (I do), read an
excerpt of “A Brief Account…” by Bartolome Las Casas, a Spanish priest who
could no longer be part of the enslavement and killing of the native peoples.

The Spaniards with their
Horses, their Speares and lances, began to commit murders, and strange
cruelties: they entred into Townes, Borowes, and Villages, sparing neither
children nor old men, neither women with childe, neither them that lay in, but
that they ripped their bellies, and cut them in peeces, as if they had beene
opening of lambes shut up in their fold. They laid wagers with such as with one
thrust of a sword would paunch or bowell a man in the middest, or with one blow
of a sword would most readily and most deliverly cut off his head, or that
would best pierce his entrals at one stroake. They tooke the little soules by
the heeles, ramping them from the mothers dugges, and crushed their heads
against the clifts. Others they cast into the Rivers laughing and mocking, and
when they tumbled into the water, they said, now shift for thy selfe such a
ones corpes. They put others, together with their mothers, and all that they
met, to the edge of the sword. They made certaine Gibbets long and low, in such
sort, that the feete of the hanged on, touched in a manner the ground, every
one enough for thirteene, in honour and worship of our Saviour and his twelve
Apostles (as they used to speake) and setting to fire, burned them all quicke
that were fastened. Unto all others, whom they used to take and reserve alive,
cutting off their two hands as neere as might be, and so letting them hang,
they said; Get you with these Letters, to carry tydings to those which are fled
by the Mountaines. They murdered commonly the Lords and Nobility on this
fashion: They made certaine grates of pearches laid on pickforkes, and made a
little fire underneath, to the intent, that by little and little yelling and
despairing in these torments, they might give up the Ghost.

This was written by a priest, mind you. The idea that
bad things are the price of progress is a common facet of the study of history
but one that only extends beyond one’s lifetime. For example, the average
American considers the genocide of the peoples of the New World as progress
towards a new nation, but few would argue that the genocide in Germany during
World War II or the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s furthered history in a
positive manner.

In
1998, Howard Zinn gave an interview to the
Revolutionary Worker
that
appeared in issue 987 on December 20.

I
got into history not to be a historian, not to be a scholar, not to be an
academic, not to write scholarly articles for scholarly journals, not to go to
academic conferences to deliver papers to bored fellow historians. I got into
history because I was already an activist at the age of 18.

I was working in a
shipyard. I was organizing young shipyard workers. And I was introduced to
radical ideas. I was reading Marx, I was reading Upton Sinclair, I was reading
Jack London, I was reading
The
Grapes of Wrath
. So I was a politically aware young man working in
the shipyard. I was there for three years. Then I enlisted in the Air Force. I
was a bombardier in the United States Air Force, and came out and worked at
various jobs. All of these influences: I came from a working class family
. . . my upbringing—I have a chapter in my memoir called ‘Growing Up
Class Conscious,’ and I guess, yes, I grew up class conscious, a phrase not too
often used in the United States . . . my class consciousness .. .
my experience in the war (World War II), my complicated reactions to the war,
the so-called ‘best war,’ ‘the good war’ . . . living in a working
class neighborhood with my wife, raising two kids, having a tough time
. . . going to school under the GI Bill while working in a warehouse
. . . being a member of a number of different unions from time to
time, interested in the labor movement, reading the history of labor struggles.

So when I began to
study history and began to think about being a teacher and writing history, I
already understood that I was not going to be a neutral teacher. I was not
going to simply be a scholar.

Zinn’s denial of neutrality is
essential in understanding his defined role as an educator. In his biographical
documentary, titled
You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
, Zinn paints
a picture of the world being in constant motion, where you cannot stand still.
Adopting this tenet in teaching can result in heavy criticism from parents who
do not want their children influenced by different ideas. These same parents
allow their kids to spend an average of four hours a night in front of the
television (documented national average of daily viewing by American children
as of early 2010) and countless more on one mobile device or another, and
somehow they are not being “influenced” by the aspects of society constructed
to do just that: advertising. Later in the interview, Howard Zinn expresses
this idea in his own words.

I wanted my writing
of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted
to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that
kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always
informed my writing and my teaching. From the very first moment I stepped into
a classroom, I knew that I was not going to be one of those teachers that at
the end of the semester, at the end of the year, the students wanted to know
where does this teacher stand. They were going to know where I stood from the
very beginning! That’s been my attitude all the way through, and still is.

The
responsibility of intellectuals is to discard the notion of ‘objectivity’ and
the notion of ‘disinterested scholarship.’ With ‘disinterested scholarship’
you’re saying everyone else is interested except me. Become engaged. Another
thing I would say is: you know you will be a better teacher, you will be a more
interesting teacher if you connect your students with what is going on in the
world and if your students see that you are connected with what is going on in
the world.

The notion of
children taking a stand in the classroom creates a culture of fear with many
parents who do not want to take a stand. They are afraid their children are
being corrupted, somehow manipulated into a revolutionary fervor. The problem
with this mentality is that it is not education. Learning is discovering, and
that cannot be done with subjective conditions or filters. Humans crave truth.
You will find this idea scripted in iron across many university thresholds and
used commonly as school mottos. But as they (I say fuck them, whoever “they”
are) say, the truth hurts. Most of us will continue to take the red pill and
live a life of glitzy emptiness punctuated by an occasional job promotion or
two-week vacation to the beach of some distant country whose citizens earn
three hundred dollars a year.

***

Once I remedied
my zipper malfunction (I did not catch this on video, unfortunately. You’ll
have to settle for Janet Jackson’s instead), I began to craft a Back-to-School
Night that prepared parents for the journey their children were about to take.
I told them that I would not be objective, the vessel for dumping safe
information into their little skulls. I also explained that the children and
the parents would not always agree with my stand, and that was fine. In fact,
it was encouraged. I routinely asked my students to challenge
everything
,
even what I stood for. However, I fear for newer teachers and those in
parochial or public institutions, where this could cost them their jobs.
Children get bombarded with subjective messaging thousands of times a day,
mostly from advertising and the media, and this is accepted by parents.
However, give them a teacher who asks kids to think, and things get dicey.

Howard Zinn is
the teacher I wish I had. He inspired generations of young people to do the
unthinkable. When he began marching in the South, nobody expected anything to
change. However, within a few short years, the Civil Rights movement exploded.
He taught us that history does not move at an even, orderly pace. The events
that forever change the evolution of the species happen without warning,
sparked by the will of the Common Man, not from the wisdom of those in power.
You are either taking a stand on that train or being run over by it.

***