[marxmail] “The People’s Historian”: Dave Zirin’s New Book Explores “Remarkable” Life of Howard Zinn

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“The People’s Historian”: Dave Zirin’s New Book Explores “Remarkable” Life
of Howard Zinn
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David Zirin Interview
August 3, 2026
Democracy Now! <https://www.democracynow.org/2026/8/3/dave_zirin>

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* We speak to Dave Zirin, author at The Nation, about his new book, The
People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, chronicling the life
and activism of the legendary historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s
History of the United States. *

Author Howard Zinn speaks during the People Speak ASCAP Music Café
performance held during the 2009 Sundance Music Festival on January 22,
2009, in Park City, Utah, Bryan Bedder / Getty Images



*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* This is *Democracy Now!*, democracynow.org.

We turn now to the new book *The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of
Howard Zinn*, written by our next guest, Dave Zirin. The book explores the
remarkable life of the late historian, teacher and activist Howard Zinn.
He’s best known for writing *A People’s History of the United States*.
First published in 1980, the book has sold more than 4 million copies.

Howard Zinn died in 2010 at the age of 87, but his work is still seen as
threatening to many, and by others, by empowering so many. During his first
term, President Trump directly attacked Zinn’s work.

*PRESIDENT* *DONALD* *TRUMP**:* The left-wing rioting and mayhem are the
direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s
gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts,
like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own
history.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* Over the years, professor Howard Zinn appeared on *Democracy
Now!* many times. In 2009, he “talked”: about the importance of teaching
students the true history of the country.

*HOWARD* *ZINN**:* It’s true that people have asked that question again and
again. You know, should we tell kids that Columbus, whom they have been
told was a great hero, that Columbus mutilated Indians and kidnapped them
and killed them in pursuit of gold? Should we tell people that Theodore
Roosevelt, who is held up as one of our great presidents, was really a
warmonger who loved military exploits and who congratulated an American
general who committed a massacre in the Philippines? Should we tell young
people that?

And I think the answer is: We should be honest with young people; we should
not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. And
we should be not only taking down the traditional heroes, like Andrew
Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, but we should be giving young people an
alternate set of heroes.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* So, that is the late great historian Howard Zinn.

Dave Zirin joins us now.

Dave, you wrote *The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn*.
Everyone knows you as a sportswriter. Why you switch gears for now, if in
fact you did? And tell us Howard Zinn’s life story and his impact.

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Well, I could tell you that in the 1930s, as a teenage
union organizer, Howard Zinn played for his union basketball team and used
his tall frame as a way to recruit people to the union, but that still
doesn’t make this a sports story. That’s as close as we’re going to get.

Howard Zinn’s life was remarkable. It was 70 years-plus of activism, 64 of
those years alongside his incredible partner Roslyn Shechter Zinn. And it’s
in those 70 years that we have so many lessons for us today and for our
struggles. I mean, we’re talking about somebody who in the 1930s, like I
said, was a teenage union organizer during the Depression. In the 1940s, he
was a bombardier in World War II who hated fascism so much, he signed up to
be a bombardier even though he’d never been on a plane. I mean, I get
claustrophobic in the middle seat, and he’s there as a bombardier. You
know, in the late 1940s, he lived through the Red Scare as a firebrand,
20-something organizer fighting for veterans’ rights in Brooklyn, which is
an incredible story which he never told unto himself, which I was able to
get documentary information on.

In the 1950s, teaching at Spelman College, a HBCU for women in Atlanta, he
taught an incredible generation of women, people like Alice Walker, the
author, Marian Wright Edelman, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, women who were the
first to graduate from Harvard Law School, and Howard Zinn was their
beloved professor. They voted him the professor of the year on campus in
their yearbook, which is an incredible little exhibit of the Howard Zinn of
that time, 1961. And then he’s forced out of the school because he dared
stand up not just for his students’ right to protest Jim Crow in Atlanta,
but also their fight against the patriarchy and sexism on their campus. He
wrote an article for *The Nation* magazine, which got wide coverage, the
virality of 1950s, that was called “A Finishing School for Pickets,” about
the women at Spelman.

Then he goes on from that and becomes one of the adult organizers of one of
the vanguard organizations of the civil rights movement, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Like, the fact that he was asked to be
an adult adviser of people like Stokely Carmichael, soon to be known as
Kwame Ture; Bob Moses; Diane Nash; Dorothy Ladner. I mean, they were
looking to both Howard Zinn and his partner at the time, Ella Baker, to be
the — his work partner — to oversee and help with SNCC. And then he worked
alongside folks like James Baldwin and Dick Gregory, like in the heart of
Jim Crow. And it wasn’t all roses and flowers, either. I mean, they had
comrades die in those streets and in those swamps fighting against Jim Crow.

And then he goes on from that to become a leading figure in the movement
against the war in Vietnam, including traveling to North Vietnam, traveling
to Hanoi on behalf of the peace movement during the Tet Offensive, during
the Tet Offensive, to free POWs.

And he continues being active into the 1980s, into the 1990s and in the
2000s, as you well know, because he loved appearing on *Democracy Now!* to
talk about this, the wars in the Middle East, the endless wars of George W.
Bush. He spoke out against something we’re dealing with so strongly today:
the growing surveillance state, that we were seeing under the PATRIOT Act
and George W. Bush.

So, the lessons of Howard Zinn’s life over 70 years are so important to us.
And I would argue the most critical lesson is that he lived through the ups
and downs. It wasn’t all pie in the sky. There were tremendous difficulties
along the way, particularly during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and
early '50s. And yet he persevered. And he persevered because he wasn't just
an activist. This is what’s so interesting about him to me, is that he was
also a trained historian. And we don’t always see trained historians on the
frontlines of activism. And frankly, that’s why so many, like, I would call
them, centrist or liberal historians are so resentful of him and his work,
because he was such a frontline fighter. And for him, being an academic was
always secondary to being in the streets and making history, not just
studying history.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* I want to go back to a 1997 film, that Oscar-winning
film *Good Will Hunting*, which had this famous scene featuring Robin
Williams and Matt Damon.

*WILL* *HUNTING**:* [played by Matt Damon] You want to read a real history
book, read Howard Zinn’s *People’s History of the United States*. That book
will [bleep] knock you on your ass.

*SEAN* *MAGUIRE**:* [played by Robin Williams] Better than Chomsky’s
*Manufacturing
Consent*? You think that’s a good book?

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* There it is. And you have a lot from Matt Damon in this
book.

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* I was able to interview Matt Damon for the book. He was
incredibly generous with his time in talking about Howard Zinn, because,
you know, he grew up next door to Howard Zinn and Roslyn Zinn and the Zinn
family in Newton, Massachusetts. They practically shared a wall of their
duplex, to the point of which Matt Damon talks about his brother hearing
Howard Zinn type out *A People’s History of the United States* on one of
those old typewriters.

And Matt Damon told a lot of stories about growing up at Zinn’s knee,
barbecues, things of the like. But the story I loved the most was that
Howard Zinn was giving their family early drafts of *A People’s History of
the United States*. And at 10 years old, Matt Damon’s mother, Nancy
Carlsson-Paige, who’s an incredible education activist, by the way, Nancy
Carlsson-Paige read her 10-year-old son the opening chapter of *A People’s
History of the United States*, which is, of course, all about the plunder
of Christopher Columbus, the depravity in terms of how he treated
Indigenous people in this country. So, 10-year-old Mattie Damon goes to
school and does an oral report in class about Christopher Columbus and all
of his crimes. And they actually — they called his parents, because they
were so concerned that he was coming into school talking about this. And as
Damon said to me, he said, “Donald Trump might say that was the beginning
of my indoctrination.”

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* I want to go back to Howard Zinn on *Democracy Now!*
like 20 years ago
<https://www.democracynow.org/2005/4/27/howard_zinn_to_be_neutral_to>.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* Howard Zinn, you called your autobiography *You Can’t Be
Neutral on a Moving Train*. Why?

*HOWARD* *ZINN**:* Well, it came from — I stole it from myself. That is, I
used to say that to my classes at the beginning of every class. I wanted to
be honest with them about the fact that they were not entering a class
where the teacher would be neutral. It was not going to be a class where
the teacher spent a half a year or year with the students, and they would
have no idea where the teacher stood on the important issues. This is not
going to be a neutral class, I said. I don’t believe in neutrality. I
believe neutrality is impossible, because the world is already moving in
certain directions. Wars are going on. Children are starving. And to be
neutral, to pretend to neutrality, to not take a stand in a situation like
that, is to collaborate with whatever is going on, to allow it to happen. I
did not want to be a collaborator with what was happening. I wanted to
enter into history. I wanted to play a role. I wanted my students to play a
role. I wanted us to intercede. I wanted my history to intercede and to
take a stand on behalf of peace, on behalf of a racial equality or sexual
equality. And so I wanted my students to know that right from the
beginning, know you can’t be neutral on a moving train.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Incredible.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* And, Dave, how did you come to know Howard Zinn?

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* I came to Howard Zinn because he got my sports writing
from a mutual friend, a collaborator of Howard Zinn named Anthony Arnove.
And Howard read it, and he asked me if I would write a book for his *People’s
History* series called *A People’s History of Sports in the United States*.
And we got to know each other.

And he asked me if I would travel with him at the end of his life and
interview him on stage. I got to tell you, the easiest — as you well know,
the easiest interview in the world. You would just say, “Howard Zinn, civil
rights movement, your thoughts?” Half an hour later and three different
times of people applauding and interrupting him. I would just sit there. I
could have had coffee and popcorn, and I would have been as happy as
anybody in the crowd. Just a terrific interview.

And I got a — a couple of times, I said to him, when he would tell his
stories, “What we need is *A People’s History of Howard Zinn*, because I
think this is very much — of Howard Zinn being of that generation of the
1930s, the Depression generation. You’re always looking at the movements.
You’re always looking at the struggle.” So, he would pull his name from the
stories and tell them more generally. And I said to him, “We need your
stories.” I never thought I’d write it, but now I have.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* And talk about him being a bombardier in World War II —

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Very powerful for him.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* — and what he then did afterwards —

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Absolutely.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* — going to the sites he had bombed.

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Well, he spoke about when he was a bombardier, about
being, quote-unquote, “war crazy,” because they psych you up. They push you
to bomb these areas. And then he realized what was happening, and he became
a person of peace for the rest of his life.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* Let’s go to Howard Zinn talking
<https://www.democracynow.org/2005/4/27/howard_zinn_to_be_neutral_to> about
this on *Democracy Now!*

*HOWARD* *ZINN**:* And we don’t know how many people we killed or how many
people were terribly burned as a result of what we did. But I did it, like
most soldiers do, unthinkingly, mechanically, thinking we’re on the right
side, they’re on the wrong side, and therefore we can do whatever we want,
and it’s OK. And only afterward, only really after the war, did I — when I
was reading about Hiroshima from John Hersey and reading the stories of the
survivors of Hiroshima and what they went through, only then did I begin to
think about the human effects of bombing. Only then did I begin to think
about what it meant to human beings on the ground when bombs were dropped
on them, because as a bombardier, I was flying at 30,000 feet, six miles
high, couldn’t hear screams, couldn’t see blood. And this is modern warfare.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* That was the great historian Howard Zinn, who went to
fight fascism, was a bombardier. He bombed occupied France.

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Yes, and a place called Royan. And he returned there in
1966 to really learn for himself about the damage that he did. He was one
of the first bombardiers to drop what they called jellied gasoline, which
came to be known as napalm, which burns off the skin, used infamously
during the war on Vietnam.

And the thing about Howard and war, which so interesting, is he then spent
decades, not with — with no publicity, writing to the Pentagon after 1966,
trying to get the truth of what happened in those bombing raids. Did they
know they were bombing civilians? Did they know the effects of napalm? And
he had a folder. He had a folder in his archives that I found that was all
about his correspondence with the Pentagon. And they sent him back letters
all the time, too, about what they would and wouldn’t show him. And he had
written on that folder, just very, very big — he just wrote, “Never again.”

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* As we wrap up, what were you most surprised by in
researching your book, *The People’s Historian*?

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* I was most surprised about his ability to endure the
downs, that his life wasn’t just about up, up and struggle, because we hear
things. Certainly, people my age hear civil rights movement, antiwar
movement, and you think of these things as these mass struggles that are
just up, up and away. There were tons of ups and downs along the way. There
was a lot of demoralization along the way. But he was able to weather that
through his knowledge of history. And I think that’s what our movements so
desperately need today, because we need to be able to endure 2026, because,
as Howard Zinn said, “You know what? The history is full of surprises, and
sometimes we can do the surprising.”

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us,
Dave Zirin, author of the new book *The People’s Historian: The Outsized
Life of Howard Zinn*. He’s sports editor at *The Nation* and author of many
other books, including *A People’s History of Sports in the United States*,
that he did at the request of Howard Zinn. We’re going to bring you a
post-show at democracynow.org. Dave is a sportswriter, and we want to find
out the politics of what just happened, the attempted privatization of FIFA.
Go to democracynow.org for that. Thank you so much for this book.

*DAVE* *ZIRIN**:* Thank you, Amy.

*AMY* *GOODMAN**:* Dave Zirin. *Democracy Now!* is produced with Mike
Burke, Deena Guzder, Anjali Kamat, Messiah Rhodes.

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-- 
JAI


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