Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People's Historian

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http://www.alternet.org/visions/howard-zinn-turns-90-great-legacy-peoples-historian



Howard Zinn would have turned 90 this Friday if his seemingly boundless energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.

Toward the end of his life, when a New York Times reporter called him with the morbid task of interviewing him in preparation for his future obituary, he asked him, “What’s your deadline?”

Howard never missed an opportunity to add levity, a sense of humanity, to the often over-serious and sterile culture of the left.

Going through Howard’s archives recently, gathering some of his talks for a book, I found early speeches of Howard’s I had never listened to before.

The speeches, going back to 1963, showed Howard’s sharp political acumen, his clarity, his ability to speak the language of his audience in a way that crystallized their passions and ideals.