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Throughout the week of the 100th anniversary of Howard Zinn’s birth on Aug. 24, 1922, there will be events for educators, archivists, and the wider community to learn from Zinn’s life and work — and to share the many ways that people continue to document and teach people’s history.

On Wednesday, August 24, 2022, sports historian Dave Zirin and Teaching for Black Lives co-editor Jesse Hagopian will host an event with special guests to commemorate Howard Zinn (1922–2010) and other people’s historians on this 100th anniversary year.

Guest Presenters

Martín Espada

Kidada E. Williams

Myla Kabat-Zinn

Imani Perry

Alice Walker

and more.

In legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are introducing bills to curtail what educators — in public schools and universities — can say and teach about racism and sexism. It is worth reminding ourselves — and our students — of other times in U.S. history when powerful politicians manufactured threats and whipped up fear to neutralize progressive challenges to the status quo — the McCarthy Era being a well-known high watermark of state repression.

In this session, led by ZEP team members Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and Jesse Hagopian, participants will experience a mixer lesson that can be used in grade 7+ classrooms. Michael Koncewicz from Tamiment will share primary documents.

“. . . the rebellion of the archivist against [their] normal role is not, as so many scholars fear, the politicizing of a neutral craft, but the humanizing of an inevitably political craft.” — Howard Zinn 

The session will draw on Zinn’s speech at the 1970 Society of American Archivists conference when he urged archivists “to take the trouble to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people.”

In addition to the panel of speakers, there will be small groups for participants to discuss opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

“The statues on our city squares are statues of military heroes. I think we ought to examine that premise that our great heroes are military heroes in war and look at other heroes.” — Howard Zinn 

In the clip below, Zinn lists some of those worthy heroes.

Watch Howard Zinn’s 2008 National Council for the Social Studies Conference keynote speech in full.

For the Howard Zinn Centennial, share YOUR story of when you first read A People’s History of the United States or how you teach people’s history. 

The right is saying that reading Zinn “makes students ashamed of their own history.” We find that reading people's history actually makes students more interested in history and inspired to engage in shaping a more just future. 

For the centennial, we are highlighting people’s historians who preceded Zinn, like George Washington Williams, and those who continue to expand the field today.

Teaching people’s history is under attack. Your donation helps us support teachers and provide more free people’s history lessons.

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PO BOX 73038, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20056 

202-588-7205 | zinnedproject.org