Thank You Thursdays: Howard Zinn


“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

The authors of history, as we know all too well within the feminist movement, have inordinate power to frame the way people think about, not only the past, but their present. When one talks about the founding of the U.S. only in terms of a glorious new beginning, one erases the centuries of life that had already taken root on this soil. When one invisbilizes women’s work, women’s experiences, women’s leadership, one robs the current generation of understanding their own legacy of strength and innovation in spite of the most oppressive odds.
Howard Zinn, one of history’s most radical and thoughtful scribes, passed away yesterday of a heart attack. According to the UK Guardian:

Zinn wrote more than 20 books and his plays have been produced around the world, but it is for A People’s History, first published in 1980 with a print run of just 5,000 copies, which the historian is best known. Told from the perspective of America’s women, Native Americans and workers, the book provides a revisionist view of American history from the arrival of Christopher Columbus – who Zinn charges with genocide – to president Bill Clinton’s first term.

Howard Zinn wrote us–the forgotten, the terrorized, the murdered, the gentle–back into the history books. He helped us see our past so we could see ourselves. And for this, we are eternally grateful.

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