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Howard Zinn Papers

Call Number

TAM.542

Dates

1901-2010, inclusive
; 1944-2010, bulk

Creator

Zinn, Howard, 1922-2010
Kabat-Zinn, Myla (Role: Donor)
Zinn, Jeff (Role: Donor)
Howard Zinn Revocable Trust (Role: Donor)

Extent

86 Linear Feet
in 83 record cartons, 1 manuscript box, 1 CD box, 1 cassette box, 1 oversize flat box, 1 oversize poster box and 1 flat file drawer.

Extent

1 websites
in 1 archived website

Language of Materials

Materials are primarily in English although there are items in French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Greek and German.

Abstract

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was an award-winning historian, activist, playwright, teacher, public speaker and author of articles, essays and books including his best-selling A People's History of the United States. Praised for his moral courage and passion for social justice, Zinn influenced thousands of students during a teaching career of more than thirty years. Reaching the wider public through his books, plays, articles, lectures and in theatrical and television presentations of his Voices of A People's History and The People Speak, Zinn celebrated the lives of ordinary individuals engaged in the struggle for peace and justice, highlighting their often overlooked victories, and encouraging his audiences to engage as well. This collection provides a broad view of Howard Zinn's many activities and interests. Among his personal papers are school and military records, datebooks, biographical articles and interviews. Correspondence with a wide variety of individuals forms a large part of the collection. There are also published and unpublished writings; drafts, fragments and corrected typescripts; datebooks and notebooks; research materials and lecture notes; posters, photographs and transparencies; annotated books, publications of many kinds, and audio and video materials documenting lectures, interviews, discussions, readings and other public events in which Zinn took part. The collection also contains Zinn's archived website, first captured in March 2009.

Biographical Note

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was an award-winning historian, activist, playwright, teacher, public speaker and author of articles, essays and books including the best-selling A People's History of the United States. Praised for his moral courage and passion for social justice, Zinn influenced thousands of students during a teaching career of more than thirty years. Reaching the wider public through his books, plays, articles, lectures and in theatrical and television presentations of his Voices of A People's History and The People Speak, Zinn celebrated the lives of ordinary individuals engaged in the struggle for peace and justice, highlighting their often overlooked victories, and encouraging his audiences to engage as well.

Born on August 24, 1922, Howard Zinn was one of four sons of working-class Jewish immigrants Edward and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn. Growing up in Brooklyn, he held after school and summer jobs from the age of fourteen, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, and worked as an apprentice ship fitter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In early 1943, he joined the Army Air Corps, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. He trained as a bombardier and flew both combat and humanitarian missions in Europe. In 1944 he married Roslyn Shechter and, after the war, they lived in public housing and began raising a family while he attended New York University on the GI Bill and worked at a variety of menial jobs. Earning an undergraduate degree from NYU in 1951, Zinn continued his education at Columbia University, completing his MA in 1952 and PhD in 1958. In 1960-1961, he was a post-doctoral fellow in East Asian Studies at Harvard University.

After part-time lecturing in history and political science (1953-1956) at Upsala College in New Jersey, Zinn accepted a position at Spelman College in Atlanta as Chairman of the Department of History and Social Sciences (1956). During his seven years at Spelman, an all-black women's college, he became deeply involved in the civil rights movement – mentoring student activists, participating in sit-ins and other actions, advising the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and producing articles for publications such as The Nation and Harper's. His activism made him unpopular with the school's administration and, in 1963, he was dismissed. Forty-one years later, in 2005, Zinn was invited to give Spelman's commencement address and the school awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

In 1964 Zinn published two books focusing on the civil rights movement – SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique—and also accepted a teaching position at Boston University.

His 24 years at BU were marked by overbooked classes and clashes with the administration, as well as teach-ins, strikes, debates, rallies and the writing of many articles, essays and books including two of particular note – Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967), one of the first to strongly condemn US actions in Vietnam, and A People's History of the Unites States (1980), his most popular work. Noam Chomsky describes this as "his enduring masterpiece", a book that communicates Zinn's "fundamental message about the crucial role of the people who remain unknown in carrying forward the endless struggle for peace and justice…"

Howard Zinn retired from Boston University in 1988. His relatively early retirement allowed him to concentrate on speaking and writing and to continue participating in demonstrations, protests, strikes and acts of civil disobedience which, on some occasions, resulted in his arrest. He spoke out against capital punishment and for improved prison conditions, expressed strong concerns about the environment and nuclear issues, consistently criticized US foreign policy in Central America and elsewhere, and was strongly opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In 2002, Harper Collins celebrated the sale of one million copies of A People's History of the United States with a New York City performance of readings based on the book. This was followed in 2004 by publication of Voices of a People's History of the United States in which Zinn and Anthony Arnove collected speeches, articles, essays, poetry and song lyrics by the individuals described in A People's History. Public performances of selections from Voices culminated in the production of a feature film, The People Speak, in 2009. The film features Zinn, along with well-known entertainers such as Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Viggo Mortensen, Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin and Danny Glover. These performances, as well as references to Zinn in popular culture, including a mention in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, significantly increased the number of his readers and viewers. In 2008, the nonprofit Zinn Education Project was established to provide teaching materials based on Zinn's work to educators at the secondary school level insuring that his views on history, politics and social justice would continue to be introduced to young audiences.

Howard Zinn died on January 27, 2010. He and his wife Roslyn, who died in 2008, had two children, Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jeff Zinn, and five grandchildren. Zinn's life and work are described in his 1995 autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train which was released in 2004 as a documentary film of the same name.

Arrangement

The Howard Zinn Papers are arranged into ten series, three of which are further arranged into subseries. Folders within each series and subseries are arranged alphabetically with several exceptions: appearances/speaking engagements are in chronological order as are audio-visual materials within each format and correspondence within specific sections.

The series arrangement of the collection is as follows:

Series I: Personal and Biographical Material, 1944-2010

Series II: Correspondence, 1962-2010

Series III: Writings, 1901-2009

Series IV: Appearances / Speaking Engagements. 1964-2008

Series V: Boston University, 1960-2003
Subseries VA: Teaching and Student Material
Subseries VB: Boston University Controversy

Series VI: Race and Civil Rights, 1932-2008

Series VII: Vietnam War, 1944-2001
Subseries VIIA: Vietnam War Material
Subseries VIIB: The Pentagon Papers

Series VIII: Subject Files, 1933-2010

Series IX: Books with Zinn Annotations, 1929-1997

Series X: Audio-Visual Material, 1957-2009
Subseries XA: Audio Cassettes
Subseries XB: Audio Compact Disks
Subseries XC: Audio Reel-to-Reel
Subseries XD: Video DVDs
Subseries XE: Video VHS
Subseries XF: Video, Other Formats

Scope and Content Note

This collection provides a broad view of Howard Zinn's many activities and interests. Among his personal papers are school and military records, datebooks, biographical articles and interviews. Correspondence with a wide variety of individuals forms a large part of the collection. There are also published and unpublished writings; drafts, fragments and corrected typescripts; datebooks and notebooks; research materials and lecture notes; posters, photographs and transparencies; annotated books, publications of many kinds, and audio and video materials documenting lectures, interviews, discussions, readings and other public events in which Zinn took part.

Correspondence is found in almost every series. The correspondence included in "Series II: Correspondence" is the most varied, containing letters, emails, postcards and related materials that Zinn had consolidated and arranged by year. Letters in "Series I: Personal and Biographical Material" involve family and close friends, and are personal in nature, while within "Series III: Writings", much of the correspondence reflects communication with publishers, editors, actors and others involved in his various projects. Zinn associated the remaining correspondence with specific topics, individuals, events or issues being addressed and that arrangement has been maintained.

Howard Zinn's extensive travels outside the United States are reflected in many parts of the collection. In addition to material in "Series VII: Vietnam War" describing his visits to Vietnam, Paris and Japan, there are a number of folders in "Series VIII: Subject Files" containing publications, clippings and notes from his 1982 visit to South Africa as well as a copy of the speech he gave in Cape Town in "Series III: Writings." He made a number of trips to Paris (1974, 1978, 1984) where he was a visiting professor at the University of Paris (Vincennes and Institut Charles Civiq) and to Italy as a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Bologna (1995). Personal correspondence and memorabilia from these and other European travels, as well as from his South African visit and several trips to Cuba, may be found in "Series I: Personal and Biographical Material."

There are many articles and newspaper clippings throughout the collection. It should be noted that he often clipped only the portions of articles that interested him, sometimes saving an initial section and not the continuation. The name of the publication and date of the article were not always saved.

The collection also contains Zinn's archived website, first captured in March 2009. In addition to a biography and bibliography, the site contains print interviews, essays and commentary, audio and video, and information about The People Speak, the documentary based on the live performances of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voices of a People's History of the United States.

Subjects

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions. Archived websites are open to researchers without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Preferred Citation

Published citations for paper and audiovisual materials should take the following form:

Identification of item, date; Howard Zinn Papers; TAM 542; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Myla Kabat-Zinn, Jeff Zinn, and The Howard Zinn Revocable Trust in 2010; additional materials were donated in 2011 and 2019. The accession numbers associated with this collection are 2010.050, 2011.035, and 2019.064.

Custodial History

Websites are selected by curators and captured through the use of Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website.

The archived website was migrated from the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service to the Internet Archive's Archive-It Service in November 2015. The link to California Digital Library was removed in October 2017.

Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures

Access to audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact special.collections@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Due to technical or privacy issues, archived websites may not be exact copies of the original website at the time of the web crawl. Certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. Other parts of websites that the crawler has difficulty capturing includes JavaScript, streaming content, database-driven content, and highly interactive content. Full-Text searches of archived websites are available at https://archive-it.org/organizations/567.

Take Down Policy

Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.

If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to repository email.

Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.

Separated Materials

A number of books from Howard Zinn's personal library were acquired with his papers and many of them were transferred to the Tamiment Library. (The more heavily annotated books were retained with the papers - see Series IX.)

Related Archival Material

Howard Zinn Papers, 1956-1970

The Wisconsin Historical Society holds a small manuscript collection acquired from Howard Zinn (1966, 1980) focusing primarily on Zinn's research on the civil rights movement and his personal involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s. The Wisconsin Historical Society finding aid may be accessed at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00588

Bibliography

Robert Cohen, "When Assessing Zinn, Listen to the Voices of Teachers and Students," in History News Network (George Mason University, January 17, 2013) is based on correspondence housed in the Howard Zinn Papers. (@http://hnn.us/articles/when-assessing-zinn-listen-voices-teachers-and-students)

Collection processed by

Jan Hilley, with the assistance of Maggie Schreiner and Walker Gunning

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-02-06 14:03:38 -0500.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information Note

No original order was apparent in the collection upon receipt. Ten linear feet of manuscript material had been in the possession of Boston University (BU) and items had been placed in new folders, many titled "Professional Material: Research Files" with, in some cases, what appear to have been the original folder titles appended. Four linear feet of audio/visual material had also been held by BU and was inventoried but not arranged in any order. One additional box contained editor's proofs of several of Zinn's books. The rest of the material came from the family in three deliveries. Within a few of the boxes, there appears to have been a somewhat alphabetic arrangement but folders with the same or similar titles were found across the entire collection. Not all of the material was contained within folders.

A series arrangement was imposed by the archivist based on aggregation of materials with similar titles and content while keeping in mind the activities and interests of Howard Zinn (e.g. teaching, writing, speaking engagements) and the various types of material (e.g. books, audio/visual items) within the collection. Description was based on original folder titles to the extent possible. Because Zinn made many notes and annotations, his original folders were often photocopied and included within the new ones.

In 2014, the archived website was added as Series XI. New York University Libraries follows professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity of the content.

In 2021, creator-supplied titles containing harmfully euphemistic language regarding the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II were identified, but have been retained to convey important contextual information regarding time and place in which the documents and titles were created.

Revisions to this Guide

December 2019: Updated by Christine Gennetti to state some audiovisual materials have been digitized and are accessible to patrons.
February 2021: Updated by Amy C. Vo to note review of legacy description about the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II
October 2021: Edited by Lyric Evans-Hunter to reflect digitization of audio and video materials.
July 2022: Updated by Lyric Evans-Hunter to reflect digitization of audio materials.
September 2022: Updated by Rachel Mahre to reflect digitization of audio materials.

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012