Letters and Diaries Archives

Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary: Sit-ins, Civil Rights, and Black Women’s Student Activism

By Robert Cohen. Foreword by Alice Walker. University of Georgia Press. 2018.
A historical overview as well as an entrée to Howard Zinn's diary that captures the political climate on a historically Black college in the 1960s. Documents the free speech, academic freedom, and student rights battles that rocked Spelman College and led to Zinn's dismissal in 1963 for supporting the student movement.

My Grades Will Not Be Instruments of War

Letter by Howard Zinn. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
In an undated letter (probably in 1966), Zinn said that he would not allow the grades he gave to play a role in helping the United States wage immoral wars. He announced that for students with a moral opposition to the war...

Voices of a People's History, 10th Anniversary Edition

Voices of a People’s History of the United States

Edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. Book - Nonfiction. Seven Stories Press. 2004, 2009, 2014.
Voices of a People’s History is the companion volume to A People’s History of the United States featuring selected testimonies to living history—speeches, letters, poems, songs—left by the people who make history happen but who usually are left out of history books—women, workers, nonwhites with short introductions by Zinn.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El and Howard Zinn (undated) | HowardZinn.org

Commemorating Tiyo Attallah Salah-El, Prison Activist

Howard Zinn letter to Tiyo Attallah Salah-El. Papers of Tiyo Attallah Salah-El (1890-2006), University of Massachusetts Amherst. September 5, 2009.
Tiyo Attallah Salah-El (Sept. 13, 1932 – June 8, 2018) was a musician, scholar, and prison abolitionist who founded the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons in 1995. Salah-El was 85 years and had been incarcerated for more than 40 years. He became pen pals with Howard Zinn who Zinn mentioned in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

Sam Lovejoy, Anti-Nukes Activist, Requests Howard Zinn to Testify | 1974

Sam Lovejoy letter to Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn Papers, New York University’s Tamiment Library. 1974.
In 1974, anti-nukes activist Sam Lovejoy wrote to Howard Zinn, asking Zinn to testify at his upcoming September 17 trial as an expert on civil disobedience. Earlier that year in February, Lovejoy toppled a weather tower that was the first stage of a proposed nuclear power plant.

Zinn’s Offer of Expert Testimony on COINTELPRO in Bari-Cherney Civil Case

Howard Zinn letter to Dennis Cunningham. April 30, 2001.
In April 2001, Howard Zinn offered to provide expert testimony in the civil case regarding the FBI’s history of using the Counterintelligence Program—COINTELPRO. Below is a transcript of his letter to the lead counsel.

Memo to Bob Moses | 1964

Howard Zinn letter to Bob Moses. Freedom Summer Digital Collection at Wisconsin Historical Society. 1964.
This 1964 memo from Howard Zinn to Bob Moses (a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) outlined a plan to minimize violence in Mississippi for the upcoming Freedom Summer, when hundreds of volunteers would be arriving to help African-American residents register to vote, establish a new political party, and learn about history and politics in the newly-formed Freedom Schools. The memo also addressed ways to pressure President Johnson to enforce constitutional rights of citizens exercising their right to vote.

Letter to Zinn from Pete Seeger | Howard Zinn Website

Letter from Pete Seeger | Feb. 6, 2006

Pete Seeger letter to Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn Papers, housed at New York University's Tamiment Library. Feb. 6, 2006.
We share this letter from the Howard Zinn Papers, housed at New York University's Tamiment Library. Pete Seeger wrote to Zinn in 2006, asking for a book recommendation on Rutherford B. Hayes.

Letter to Grace Hoag | June 3, 1968

Howard Zinn letter to Grace Hoag. Hall-Hoag Collection, Brown University. June 3, 1968
In this letter dated June 3, 1968, Howard Zinn replies to an inquiry from Grace Hoag asking about the “communist manipulation of demonstrations.” Zinn defends the integrity of young people “who are too intelligent to be led astray.”

Type of Content: Letters and Diaries

My Grades Will Not Be Instruments of War

Voices of a People’s History of the United States

Commemorating Tiyo Attallah Salah-El, Prison Activist

Sam Lovejoy, Anti-Nukes Activist, Requests Howard Zinn to Testify | 1974

Zinn’s Offer of Expert Testimony on COINTELPRO in Bari-Cherney Civil Case

Memo to Bob Moses | 1964

Letter from Pete Seeger | Feb. 6, 2006

Letter to Grace Hoag | June 3, 1968

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