US historian and anti-war activist Howard Zinn dies

[AvAstiN]

American historian, playwright and anti-Vietnam war activist Howard Zinn has died at the age of 87 in Santa Monica, California.

Zinn was known as a forerunner of the post-World War II African American civil rights movement. He died of a heart attack on Wednesday, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn told the Associated Press.

Zinn was most famous for his bestseller “A People's History of the United States,” which offers a different view of the American history.

First published in 1980, the book recounts the American history from the perspective of the country's women, workers and Native Americans.

Zinn wrote more than 20 books on US civil rights, civil liberties and anti-war movements and his plays have been produced around the world.

From 1956 to 1963, he taught history course at Spelman College in Atlanta, attended mostly by black female students.

He was also a Professor of Political Science at Boston University from 1964 to 1988 and a Visiting Professor at both the University of Paris and the University of Bologna.

Zinn's greatest aim was to teach his students how to speak up and fight injustice in any form.

"I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble," he wrote in his autobiography. “You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.”

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