page_title: Howard Zinn
section_title: FBI files
hierarchical_section_title: Howard Zinn / Life and career / FBI files
caption_attribution_description: English: Occupy Oakland, November 12 2011, afternoon. howard zinn quote
context_page_description: Howard Zinn was an American historian, playwright, and socialist thinker. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People's History of the United States.
  Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He wrote extensively about the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010, at age 87.
context_section_description: On July 30, 2010, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) releasing a file with 423 pages of information on Howard Zinn's life and activities. During the height of McCarthyism in 1949, the FBI first opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn (FBI File # 100-360217), based on Zinn's activities in what the agency considered to be communist front groups, such as the American Labor Party, and informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Zinn denied ever being a member and said that he had participated in the activities of various organizations which might be considered Communist fronts, but that his participation was motivated by his belief that in this country people had the right to believe, think, and act according to their own ideals. According to journalist Chris Hedges, Zinn "steadfastly refused to cooperate in the anti-communist witchhunts in the 1950s."
  Later in the 1960s, as a result of Zinn's campaigning against the Vietnam War and his influence on Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI designated him a high security risk to the country by adding him to the Security Index, a listing of American citizens who could be summarily arrested if a state of emergency were to be declared. The FBI memos also show that they were concerned with Zinn's repeated criticism of the FBI for failing to protect blacks against white mob violence. Zinn's daughter said she was not surprised by the files; "He always knew they had a file on him."
caption: Occupy Oakland, November 12, 2011, Howard Zinn quotation
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