This week marks the 100th anniversary of Howard Zinn’s birth on August 24, 1922 in Brooklyn. Although Howard died in 2010, his work continues to inform and inspire educators around the world. His most popular book, A People’s History of the United States, has sold close to 4 million copies.

At the Zinn Education Project, we invite you to join us as we commemorate the anniversary in a number of ways.

Continue to provide free lessons and classes on teaching people’s history and defend teachers’ right to teach outside the textbook. Since we launched the Zinn Education Project with the support of Howard Zinn in 2008, more than 147,000 teachers have signed up to access free people’s history lessons from our website. Thousands more have participated in our online classes, workshops, and study groups. Those teachers are under attack from right-wing legislation that bans teaching about systemic racism, making it difficult to teach honestly about U.S. history.

Highlight examples of the people’s historians who preceded Howard Zinn and the countless contemporary people’s historians. Howard Zinn was part of a tradition of people’s historians. As we commemorate Zinn, we also celebrate other people’s historians who have done — and continue to do — extraordinary work.  

Share Howard Zinn’s writing about prisons and his correspondence with prisoners. While Zinn’s essays on the Civil Rights Movement and war are well known, his writing about prisons gets less attention, reflecting the invisibility of mass incarceration in this country. We are shining a light on Zinn’s extensive, decades-long correspondence with prisoners and his belief that prisons should be abolished.

Read Howard Zinn’s Work

Rethinking Schools has published a “Zinn at 100” essay in each issue this year. The most recent column, “Eugene Debs and the Idea of Socialism,” was just published at the Rethinking Schools website. Previous Zinn essays were on nationalism, empire, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition to A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn wrote more than 20 books covering topics such as the Civil Rights Movement, labor, the anti-war movement, critiques of prison and policing, and more.

Beacon Press, Haymarket Books, The New Press, and Seven Stories Press are offering a free e-book, A Life of Activism: Howard Zinn in His Own Words – Selected Writings for the Centennial.

We are sharing quotes by Howard Zinn from his books and speeches. Join us and share your favorite Zinn quote with #HowardZinn100.

We begin our selection of writing by Howard Zinn on prisons with an essay called “Solutions” from Justice in Everyday Life: The Way It Really Works, published in 1974.

In the spirit of prison abolitionists today, Zinn wrote that, “Prisons cannot be reformed, any more than slavery can be reformed. They have to be abolished. And yet, they will not be abolished until society is changed, until people think differently about punishment, about law, about crime, about violence, about property, about human beings.”

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.

Share your story on social media with #HowardZinn100. If it is a teaching story, submit here and we may send you a book in appreciation.

with People’s Historians

We invite you to join our monthly classes with people’s historians. In each session, a teacher interviews the historian and breakout rooms allow participants in small groups to meet each other, discuss the content, and share teaching ideas.

Teachers are under attack for teaching truthfully about U.S. history. Please donate so that we can continue to offer free people’s history lessons and resources, and defend teachers’ right to use them.