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Howard Zinn R.I.P.
Posted
7:17 PM
Author
Kevin C. Peterson
Rare are those Americans who are able to articulate in the clearest of terms essential matters of fact and truth with such sustained passion that further clarification on such issues is not really required.
In the realm of the arts, Louis Armstrong, whose body of work in the American jazz medium created the basis for the development of all modern music, conveyed in creative aural tonality a new artistic expression and cultural meaning that was unmistakable.
In American politics, Abraham Lincoln similarly grasped the subtlety of high-minded expression to speak to the facts of Civil War in ways that appealed to transcendent truths that presaged a new nation.
Howard Zinn was also such an American.
A historian by profession, Zinn almost single handedly redirected historical methodology in America which had left women, the poor, blacks, Latinos and gays on the margins of the American story. More than most historians before him, Zinn sought to be truthful about the entire American record and so decided to cast the spotlight on those whom were often ushered into the wastelands of non-essential facts.
When Zinn died last week at the age of 87, he left behind a body of work that identified him in the left-liberal wing of professional history telling. Such did not make his work less true or less compelling.
Zinn is gone. But no educated American, now or in the future, will deny the extraordinary impact he made as a professor of history at Boston University and as the author of many books, including his classic, A Peoples History of the United States.
The nation was made more mature by the activism and scholarship of Zinn. He should not be forgotten as a great American whose eyes were always on the prize and whose voice was forever clear with resonate truth.