Howard Zinn on Race

Howard Zinn on Race is Zinn’s choice of the shorter writings and speeches that best reflect his views on America’s most taboo topic. As chairman of the history department at all black women’s Spelman College, Zinn was an outspoken supporter of student activists in the nascent civil rights movement. In "The Southern Mystique," he tells of how he was asked to leave Spelman in 1963 after teaching there for seven years. "Behind every one of the national government’s moves toward racial equality," writes Zinn in one 1965 essay, "lies the sweat and effort of boycotts, picketing, beatings, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations." He firmly believed that bringing people of different races and nationalities together would create a more compassionate world, where equality is a given and not merely a dream.
These writings, which span decades, express Zinn’s steadfast belief that the people have the power to change the status quo, if they only work together and embrace the nearly forgotten American tradition of civil disobedience and revolution. In clear, compassionate, and present prose, Zinn gives us his thoughts on the Abolitionists, the march from Selma to Montgomery, John F. Kennedy, picketing, sit-ins, and, finally, the message he wanted to send to New York University students about race in a speech he delivered during the last week of his life.
"I don’t think it would be hard to imagine what King would be saying to us today. I think he would be protesting the war policies and militarism of this administration just as he protested the policies of the Johnson Administration. I think he would be demanding that the great wealth of this country not be used for war or militarism, but that the wealth of this country be used to give everybody, everybody, the things that they need to enjoy life including absolutely free healthcare for everybody. I think he would be demanding of the politicians and asking us to demand of the politicians not the puny reforms we see bandying about Congress, but fundamental change."