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Debunking Howard Zinn

Page 34

by Mary Grabar


  90. Zinn, A People’s History, 683.

  91. Ibid., 684.

  92. Ibid.

  93. Howard Zinn, “Arawaks,” The American Scholar, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Summer 1981), 431–32.

  94. Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (Basic Books: New York, 2001), 69–70, 95.

  95. Hoffer, Past Imperfect, 135–36.

  96. “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct (Updated 2018),” American Historical Association, 2018, https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-standards-and-guidelines-of-the-discipline/statement-on-standards-of-professional-conduct.

  97. Hoffer, Past Imperfect, 135.

  Chapter One: Columbus Bad, Indians Good

  1. Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 2.

  2. Jennifer C. Braceras, “The Intellectual Roots of the War against Columbus,” National Review, October 9, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/christopher-columbus-day-left-marxists-anti-capitalist-ku-klux-klan-anti-catholic/.

  3. Leslie Eastman, “How Badly Were Christopher Columbus Statues Vandalized This Year?”, Legal Insurrection, October 10, 2017, https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/10/how-badly-were-christopher-columbus-statues-vandalized-this-year/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29.

  4. Tamar Lapin and Natalie Musumeci, “Christopher Columbus Statue defaced in Central Park,” New York Post, September 12, 2017, https://nypost.com/2017/09/12/christopher-columbus-statue-defaced-in-central-park/.

  5. Mariya Manzhos, “Winchester Students, Citing Atrocities Ask Schools to Rename Columbus Day,” Wicked Local Winchester, November 24, 2017, https://winchester.wickedlocal.com/news/20171124/winchester-students-citing-atrocities-ask-schools-to-rename-columbus-day.

  6. Holly Yan, “Across the US, More Cities Ditch Columbus Day to Honor Those Who Really Discovered America,” CNN, October 8, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/us/columbus-day-vs-indigenous-peoples-day/index.html.

  7. Kristin Lamb, “For First Time, Columbus Will Not Honor Columbus Day, Its Namesake Holiday,” USA Today, October 7, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/07/columbus-ohio-not-observe-columbus-day/1560105002/; Colin Kalmbacher, “Columbus, Ohio Will No Longer Celebrate Columbus Day,” Law & Crime, October 8, 2018, https://lawandcrime.com/politics/columbus-ohio-will-no-longer-celebrate-columbus-day/.

  8. Nicholas Lovino, “San Francisco Replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Courthouse News Service, January 23, 2018, https://www.courthousenews.com/sf-replaces-columbus-day-with-indigenous-peoples-day/.

  9. Jessica Kramer, “What Do Americans Really Think About Columbus Day?” The Daily Caller, October 8, 2018, https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/08/americans-really-think-columbus-day/.

  10. James Green, “Howard Zinn’s History,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2003, B13–14.

  11. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, revised and updated edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 613–16.

  12. Ibid., 616.

  13. Howard Zinn, “The Future of History,” July 27 and 28, 1998, in Howard Zinn, The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999), 136.

  14. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 1. All references to A People’s History of the United States below are to the 2003 edition unless otherwise noted.

  15. Zinn, “The Future of History,” 135.

  16. Ibid., 136.

  17. Davis D. Joyce, Howard Zinn: A Radical American Vision (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), 173.

  18. Zinn, A People’s History, 2.

  19. Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991), 17. Originally published in 1976.

  20. Zinn, A People’s History, 3.

  21. Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 54–55.

  22. Sam Dillon, “Schools Growing Harsher in Scrutiny of Columbus,” New York Times, October 12, 1992.

  23. James Ferguson, “Hans Koning,” Guardian, June 5, 2007.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Douglas Martin, “Hans Koning, 85, Prolific Left-Leaning Writer, Is Dead,” New York Times, April 18, 2007, C12.

  26. Hans Koning, “Don’t Celebrate 1492—Mourn It,” New York Times, August 14, 1990.

  27. Hans Koning, “Rewriting Our History,” Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 3, July–August 1992.

  28. Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 12.

  29. Ibid., 11, 22, 24, 27–28, and 32.

  30. Harvey Morris, “Profile: Christopher Columbus: A Good Thing, Even: Harvey Morris Berates Those Who Lay All the Ills of the West at One Man’s Feet,” Independent, October 11, 1992, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/profile-christopher-columbus-a-good-thing-even-harvey-morris-berates-those-who-lay-all-the-ills-of-1556723.html.

  31. P. Gray and C. Booth, “The Trouble with Columbus,” Time, October 7, 1991, 52.

  32. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “In Defense of Columbus: The Trouble with Eden,” Economist, December 21, 1991, 73.

  33. William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 11.

  34. Andrew G. Bostom, “Ignored History: Columbus Sought to End Islamic Tyranny,” PJ Media, October 8, 2018, https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/ignored-history-columbus-sought-to-end-islamic-tyranny/.

  35. Phillips and Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, 17, 159.

  36. Robert H. Fuson, trans., The Log of Christopher Columbus (Camden, Maine: International Marine, 1987), 76.

  37. Cecil Jane, trans., The Journal of Christopher Columbus (New York: Bramhall House, 1960), 22–24.

  38. Fuson, trans., The Log of Christopher Columbus, 31–32.

  39. Jane, trans., The Journal of Christopher Columbus, 24, 28.

  40. Zinn, A People’s History, 1–4.

  41. Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 51.

  42. Ibid., 35.

  43. Carol Delaney, “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 48, No. 2 (April 2006), 260–92.

  44. Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, 38.

  45. Delaney, “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal.”

  46. Edward Countryman, letter to Howard Zinn, February 24, 1989, Howard Zinn Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University.

  47. Howard Zinn to Edward Countryman, February 28, 1989, Howard Zinn Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University.

  48. Zinn, A People’s History, p. 63.

  49. Edward Countryman to Howard Zinn, February 28, 1989, Howard Zinn Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University.

  50. Zinn, A People’s History, 5–6.

  51. Ibid., 3.

  52. Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 58.

  53. Zinn, A People’s History, 4.

  54. William F. Keegan, “Destruction of the Taino,” Archaeology (January/February 1992), 51–56.

  55. Zinn, A People’s History, 5.

  56. L. A. Vigneras, foreword, The Journals of Christopher Columbus, trans. Cecil Jane (New York: Crown, 1989), xiv.

  57. Zinn, A People’s History, 5.

  58. Andrée Collard, introduction to Bartolomé de Las Casas, History of the Indies, trans. Andrée Collard (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), xi, note 2.

  59. Ibid., ix–x.

  60. Ibid., xiii.

  61. Las Casas, History of the Indies, 154; quoted by Zinn, 7.

  62. Zinn, A People’s History, 7.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Phillips and Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, 254.

  65. Collard, introduction to History of the Indies, xiv.

  66. Collard, introduction to History of the Indies, xv.

  67. Las Casas, History of the Indies, pp. 34–35.

  68. Collard, introductio
n to History of the Indies, xviii–xix.

  69. Laurence Bergreen, Columbus: The Four Voyages (New York: Viking, 2011), 365.

  70. Collard, introduction to History of the Indies, p.xii.

  71. Zinn, A People’s History, 9, 11.

  72. Ibid., 5.

  73. Las Casas, History of the Indies, 63.

  74. Ibid., 64–65.

  75. Ibid., 77–82.

  76. Collard, introduction to History of the Indies, xvii.

  77. Zinn, A People’s History, 1.

  78. Zinn, A People’s History, 7.

  79. Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 88.

  80. Zinn, A People’s History, 7–8.

  81. Laurence Bergreen, Columbus: The Four Voyages (New York: Viking, 2011), 373.

  82. Samuel Eliot Morison, “Texts and Translations of the Journal of Columbus’s First Voyage,” the Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (August 1939), 235–61.

  83. Zinn, A People’s History, 10.

  84. Ibid., 10, 8.

  85. Zinn, A People’s History, 8.

  86. Ibid., 1.

  87. Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942, 1955), 51

  88. Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner, 66.

  89. Ibid., 100.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Ibid., 112.

  92. Ibid, 124–25.

  93. Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages A.D. 1492–1616, 81.

  94. Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner, 131.

  95. Ibid., 172–73.

  96. Ray Raphael, “Thomas A. Bailey: Dead and Forgotten by His Publisher?” History News Network, April 26, 2015, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159214.

  97. Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant, 2nd ed. (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1961), 7, 9–10.

  98. Curtis P. Nettels, The Roots of American Civilization: A History of American Colonial Life, second edition (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), 34.

  99. Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 45.

  100. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, volume one, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 24.

  101. Zinn, A People’s History, 9.

  102. Ibid.

  103. Ibid, 10.

  104. Ibid, 8.

  105. Ibid, 9.

  106. Author interview of Eugene Genovese, September 1, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia.

  107. Leah Shafer and Bari Walsh, “The Columbus Day Problem,” Usable Knowledge, Harvard Graduate School of Education, October 5, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/profile-christopher-columbus-a-good-thing-even-harvey-morris-berates-those-who-lay-all-the-ills-of-1556723.html.

  Chapter Two: The Life of Zinn

  1. Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 1–2.

  2. Martin Duberman, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (New York: The New Press, 2012), 277.

  3. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 643–44.

  4. Ibid., 633–34.

  5. “About,” Before Columbus Foundation, no date, http://www.beforecolumbusfoundation.com/about/.

  6. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 2.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Zinn, A People’s History, 9.

  9. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 2.

  10. Zinn, A People’s History, 59.

  11. Ibid., 73.

  12. Ibid., 96.

  13. Ibid., 99.

  14. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 3.

  15. Ibid., 4.

  16. Ibid., 6–7.

  17. “New Faculty Appointments Are Announced,” Atlanta Daily World, September 15, 1956, p. 1, col. 5.

  18. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 22.

  19. Howard Zinn, FBI files, Part 1, pp. 4, 5, 11, 50, 54, 80, and 109, Part 1, https://vault.fbi.gov/Howard%20Zinn%20.

  20. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 23–24.

  21. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 171–72.

  22. Ibid., 172–73.

  23. “Red Agitators Dispersed,” New York Times, October 2, 1938, 41.

  24. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 175.

  25. Maurice Isserman, “When New York City Was the Capital of American Communism,” New York Times, October 20, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/opinion/new-york-american-communism.html?_r=0.

  26. Robert Cohen, Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary: Sit-ins, Civil Rights, and Black Women’s Student Activism (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2018), 243–44, note 64.

  27. John Earl Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace? (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 197.

  28. John Barron, Operation Solo: The FBI’s Man in the Kremlin (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1996), 31.

  29. Ronald Radosh, “Aside from That, He Was Also a Red,” Weekly Standard, August 16, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/aside-from-that-he-was-also-a-red/article/489471.

  30. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 26–27.

  31. Zygmund Dobbs, Red Intrigue and Race Turmoil (New York: Alliance, Inc., c. 1958), 73.

  32. Maurice Issernan, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 29–33, 186–187.

  33. Davis D. Joyce, Howard Zinn: A Radical Vision (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), 48.

  34. Karen Vanlandingham, “In Pursuit of a Changing Dream: Spelman College Students and the Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1962,” master’s thesis, 1985, Emory University, 45–46.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Howard Zinn, “Finishing School for Pickets,” Nation, August 6, 1960.

  37. Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 38.

  38. Vanlandingham, “In Pursuit of a Changing Dream,” 50.

  39. Joyce, Howard Zinn, 41–48.

  40. Vanlandingham, “In Pursuit of a Changing Dream,” 61.

  41. Ibid., 57.

  42. Ibid., 65, 71, and 58.

  43. Albert E. Manley, A Legacy Continues: The Manley Years at Spelman College, 1953–1976, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995), 174.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 37.

  46. Ibid, 40.

  47. Ibid., 41–42.

  48. Marian Wright Edelman, “Spelman College: A Safe Haven for a Young Black Woman,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 27 (spring, 2000), 118–23.

  49. FBI file on Howard Zinn, page 108, part 1, https://vault.fbi.gov/Howard%20Zinn%20.

  50. “Feels U.N. Should Accept Red China,” Atlanta Daily World, February 15, 1962, 1.

  51. Cohen, Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary, 239, note 10.

  52. “20 Chicagoans Attend SNCC Meeting in Atlanta,” Daily Defender, April 7, 1964, 4.

  53. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 43.

  54. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 79–83.

  55. Ibid., 85.

  56. Howard Zinn, “Biographical Data,” Howard Zinn Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University.

  57. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 85.

  58. Ibid., 87–89.

  59. Ibid., 87.

  60. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 27.

  61. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 89–90.

  62. Ibid., 91–92.

  63. David Greenberg, “Agit-Prof, Howard Zinn’s Mutilations of American History,” The New Republic, March 19, 2013.

  64. Martin Duberman, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (New York: The New Press, 2012), 188–89.

  65. Cohen, Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary, 73, 74.

  66. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 184–85; William Holtzman, “Howard Zinn, My Courageous Friend,” Teaching a People’s History: Zinn Education Project, August 17, 2012, https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/howard-zinn-my-courageous-friend/.

  67. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 185–92.

  68. Alice Wa
lker, “Saying Goodbye to My Friend Howard Zinn,” Boston Globe, January 31, 2010, http://archive.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/01/31/alice_walker_says_goodbye_to_her_friend_howard_zinn/.

  69. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 119.

  70. Holtzman, “Howard Zinn.”

  71. Author interview of Emily Rentz, October 5, 2018.

  72. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 198.

  73. Ibid., 141, 148–49.

  74. Ibid., 141.

  75. Peter Wood, email to the author, February 23, 2018.

  76. Joyce, Howard Zinn, 86–87.

  77. Wood, email to the author.

  78. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 7–8.

  79. Joyce, Howard Zinn, 83–85.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Ibid.

  82. Robert Cohen, “Mentor to the Movement: Howard Zinn, SNCC, and the Spelman College Freedom Struggle,” in Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary, 17.

  83. Joyce, Howard Zinn, 82–83.

  84. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 199–200.

  85. Paul Kengor, “Hollywood’s Blacklisted Communist: The Truth About Trumbo,” Human Events, November 6, 2015, http://humanevents.com/2015/11/06/the-truth-about-trumbo/.

  86. Paul Kengor, “Arthur Miller—Communist,” American Spectator, October 16, 2015, https://spectator.org/64379_arthur-miller-communist/.

  87. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 121.

  88. Ibid., 126–27.

  89. Sydney Gruson, “Dispute in Laos on Travel,” New York Times, February 17, 1968, 7.

  90. “Pentagon Papers,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers.

  91. Duberman, Howard Zinn, 175–78.

  92. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 159–61.

  93. Ibid., 206.

  94. David Zirin, “You Have to Go Beyond Capitalism [interview of Howard Zinn],” International Socialist Review, issue 66, https://isreview.org/issue/66/you-have-go-beyond-capitalism.

  95. Joyce, Howard Zinn, 151.

  96. George Bush, “Proclamation 6484—Columbus Day 1992,” the American Presidency Project, http://presidency.proxied.lsit.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=47411.

  97. William J. Clinton, “Proclamation 6608—Columbus Day, 1993,” the American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=62444.

  98. Julia Fair, “How Donald Trump’s Columbus Day Proclamation Compares to Previous Presidents,” USA Today, October 9, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/10/09/president-trumps-columbus-day-proclamation-excludes-native-americans/746436001/.

 

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