American Rights at Work pays tribute to Howard Zinn and celebrates his work bringing to light the extraordinary power of ordinary people in creating social change throughout the course of our nation’s history.

Presented by Chris Moore
Historian, activist, and author Howard Zinn (1922-2010) lifted up the often-overlooked stories of everyday Americans, and through his writing brought the voices of workers and activists into the discourse on our nation’s history.  A scholar who taught at Spelman College and Boston University, Zinn is most well-known as the author of A People’s History of the United States, one of the best-selling U.S. history books of our day.

A People’s History of the United States features workers, farmers, people of color, women, abolitionists, and others left out of traditional history textbooks. The companion primary source volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, co-edited with Anthony Arnove, lets these people speak for themselves, in letters, journal entries, speeches, and newspaper articles drawn from archives and records around the country.

A civil rights champion, anti-war protestor, and labor supporter, Zinn coupled his scholarship with activism.  He marched for desegregation, and served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He supported Harvard University workers and students organizing for a living wage, spoke out against farmworker exploitation, and when he retired, ended his last class early to join a picket line supporting janitors at Boston University.

In 2009, Zinn co-directed, co-produced and narrated the documentary feature film The People Speak, his final work.  Through dramatic and musical performances, the film gives voice to those who spoke up throughout U.S. history to forge a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice. As Zinn says in the film, “When we look back at history, yes, we see war and injustice. But we also see people behaving magnificently against great odds, and that encourages us to act…We see that the smallest of acts, multiplied by the millions, can lead into great movements of social change.”