The people’s read-in

NEARLY 200 people packed into a Purdue University lecture hall on November 5 to celebrate the life and work of the "people's historian," Howard Zinn. Events held in solidarity with the "Howard Zinn Read-In" took place in schools at every level around Indiana and beyond.

The read-in was organized by Purdue faculty, students and West Lafayette community members in response to the news this past summer that Purdue's new President Mitch Daniels, while governor of Indiana in 2010, tried to ban Zinn's work from being taught in Indiana schools. In e-mails, Daniels claimed Zinn was a "terrible un-American academic" and that his best-selling book A People's History of the United States "misstates American history on every page."

It's no surprise that a right-wing ideologue would smear Zinn, whose books and speeches have introduced the real history of the U.S.--a history of oppression and injustice, but also resistance--to many, many more people than will remember Mitch Daniels in the future.

The read-in was organized to gratefully acknowledge Zinn's contribution--and to celebrate academic freedom and public education, in the face of ongoing assaults carried out by the likes of Daniels.

The forum at Purdue featured an extraordinary gathering of speakers, including: Zinn's longtime friend and fellow path-breaking historian from below, Staughton Lynd, co-author with his wife Alice of the classic oral history Rank and File; James Loewen, best known as the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, a critique of the conservative bias in public school textbooks; former Col. Anne Wright, who resigned from the State Department in protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; Seattle high school teacher Jesse Hagopian, who helped to lead a successful boycott of the MAP standardized test in a number of local schools; and Indiana University history professor Alex Lichtenstein. The event was moderated by event organizer and Purdue history professor Tithi Bhattacharya, as well as Anthony Arnove, coauthor with Zinn of Voices of a People's History of the United States.

FROM START to finish, the mood of the evening was electric. After introductions, Alex Lichtenstein started things by reading excerpts from a 1967 speech Zinn gave at Indiana University (IU), condemning the U.S. war in Vietnam. Zinn came to campus only a month after Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke at IU in defense of the war.

In the speech, Zinn answered, point by point, the arguments Rusk made to justify U.S. aggression. "Throughout history," Zinn said, "as long as we can remember, rulers have sent young men to war, and for no good reason, except their own power, their own wealth, their own pride."

Zinn quoted from a 1918 speech opposing the First World War by Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs in Canton, Ohio: "The master class has always ordered the wars, the working class has always fought in them." The Debs allusion resonated with another radical life celebrated in the Read-In--organizers had selected November 5 to make the birthday of American history's best-known socialist, who was also a native of Indiana, born in Terre Haute.

Anne Wright linked Zinn's antiwar activism to her own decision to resign from the government in 2003 in protest of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. Wright drew applause for warning the audience not to trust those in power in the government and for admitting that she herself was a "late bloomer" to opposition to U.S. militarization across the globe.

Wright lamented that Zinn had died in 2010 before having a chance to write about the current generation of "whistleblowers," such as Chelsea Manning, currently imprisoned for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks; and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Administration contract employee who exposed the reach of the U.S. surveillance machine. Wright drew a circle around herself, these dissidents, Zinn and the audience by pausing to acknowledge those attending from Veterans for Peace, who co-sponsored the read-in.

Jesse Hagopian spoke via Skype from Seattle, talking about impact of Zinn's work on his own teaching and the lives of his students at Garfield High School in Seattle. He drew sympathetic laughter when he said that Zinn had reduced the "drool factor" for students--by animating the tensions and conflicts of U.S. history and demonstrating the capacity of ordinary people to think critically and act collectively.

Hagopian said reading Zinn helped inspire students to go along with teachers and activists to the Washington state house to protest proposed budget cuts to public education. After Hagopian himself was arrested at the state house, students organized a walkout against the cuts, demanded a meeting with the Mayor of Seattle and advocated for full funding.

James Loewen's personal history with Mitch Daniels dates to 2006, when Daniels pressured state offices into cancelling speeches he was scheduled to give in Indiana. Loewen was preparing talks on the state's "sundown towns"--the name for towns described by Loewen as "all white, on purpose," and where African Americans needed to be gone by sundown, or face the threat of violence.

In July 2006, Loewen published an article describing Greensburg, Ind., as a sundown town after he discovered that Honda was building a new plant there. Honda, Loewen noted, tried to put in place a restriction that employees must live within 35 miles of the all-white town, effectively excluding African Americans who lived further than this distance from applying for jobs. Pressure from the Urban League forced Honda to extend the residency restriction boundary.

THE EMOTIONAL climax of the evening was delivered by 83-year-old Staughton Lynd.

Lynd was Zinn's colleague at Spelman College in the early 1960s (both were teachers of Alice Walker, who dedicated her novel Meridian to Lynd). Zinn and Lynd were heavily involved in the civil rights movement--Zinn was an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and chronicled the organization's history in The New Abolitionists; Lynd was director of the Freedom Schools during SNCC's 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi.

Lynd focused on three aspects of Zinn's personal life that were core elements of his approach to writing history and a life of activism.

The first was his betrayed confidence in the state caused by Zinn's experience as a bombardier in the Second World War. Zinn dropped bombs on civilian targets in Germany, and what he later learned to be napalm on surrendering German soldiers in France. When the war ended, Lynd said, Zinn gathered his military papers into a folder and wrote across the cover the words "Never again."

The second element was the fight against racism. According to Lynd, Zinn developed an understanding that "equal-status contact over a period of time" was essential to overcoming racial division. As evidence Lynd quoted from Zinn's Autobiography where he talked about developing worker solidarity in a warehouse, loading boxes with African American and Honduran coworkers.

The third aspect was working-class struggle. Lynd told a story about how Zinn, while a faculty member at Boston University, insisted that faculty walk the picket lines in solidarity with campus secretaries, though doing so might be seen as defying a labor agreement between faculty and administration.

Lynd also challenged the audience to consider Zinn's legacy and apply it to current moments of struggle. He drew a comparison between Zinn's conception of the "people" and Occupy's slogan about the "99 Percent." Lynd closed with a elegiac tribute to Zinn's play about the life of Emma Goldman, summarizing its last act to the curtain fall.

The Zinn read-in at Purdue was supported by a wide layer of the campus and community, including VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood, a campus group dedicated to reproductive justice for women and the Puerto Rican Students Association, among others. Financial support for holding the event came from individuals--including a $5 contribution from a woman whose mother had been laid off due to Daniels' budget cuts as governor--and unions, including the Indiana American Federation of Teachers.

THERE WERE numerous Zinn Read-In solidarity events held at campuses across the country, including Indiana University-South Bend, Ohio State University and Berea College.

For example, on the urban campus of Indiana University and Purdue University in Indianapolis, 20 speakers--including students, professors, high school teachers, alumni and community organizers--read from Zinn's works and discussed issues related to democratic education and free speech. According to Jason Kelly, an associate professor in the history department, organizers began a Howard Zinn book drive and plan to deliver his writings to local high schools.

At Indiana University's flagship campus in Bloomington, 75 people attended an event organized by members of the Progressive Faculty and Staff Caucus (PFSC). According to Joseph Varga, an assistant professor of labor studies, "The PFSC thought it was important to host a solidarity event on the Bloomington campus, as IUB's School of Education had been the target of former Gov. Mitch Daniels' now infamous attempt to censor the work of Zinn."

Among the speakers in Bloomington was Stepanka Korytova, a visiting scholar-in-residence and native of former Czechoslovakia, who said she didn't expect to have to speak out against censorship on a campus in the "land of the free." The closing speaker, activist Rev. Bill Breeden, emphasized the irony of Mitch Daniels' appointment as president of a leading Indiana research university and, according to Varga, "reminded the mostly young crowd that those who hold power, like Daniels, always fear free thought and collective action."

Back at Purdue, student volunteers for the read-in explained their participation as a commitment to Zinn and his legacy. Na'eema Webb, a graduate student in American Studies, said she volunteered her labor:

because I believe that Zinn's life and works are worth being celebrated. Zinn was truly a warrior for truth, and I was frankly embarrassed, yet not surprised, when I found out that the president of such a "diverse" institution such as Purdue made efforts to ban Zinn's book...I decided to take part in the read-in as an act of solidarity with the many others across the nation who believe in academic freedom. The event was powerful as it shed light on the systematic and continual effort of the state censor the voices of ordinary people such as myself.

The Purdue event was live-streamed by the video site WeAreMany.org, where the video of the event can be watched.

During the read-in, two Purdue professors announced the creation of a "Howard Zinn Memorial Research Award" to support students in American Studies whose research focuses on "men and women typically left out of the master narrative--dissenters, Africans Americans, Native Americans, women, working people and other under-represented groups." People interested in contributing to the Award can e-mail Lori Sparger in the Purdue development office.

The power of this event paid tribute to an important figure in the radical history he himself chronicled. Above all, the Howard Zinn Read-In demonstrated that Zinn's legacy has far outlived attempts to silence his voice.