UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper XLVI: April 21, 2008, 7:00 p.m.

Howard Zinn,

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1994; new ed. 2002).Preface 2002.

Sept. 11 attacks (vii).Refuses to “justify war” because while its justifications are doubtful, in our time it“inevitably means the indiscriminatekilling of large numbers of innocentpeople” (viii). The public is enticed tosupport violence through “deceptivewords” that disguise the fundamentalfact of inequality (ix). Small acts canhave large consequences (x).

Introduction: The Question Period inKalamazoo.

[Written in the summer of 1993.] This book an answer to thequestion “What gives you hope?” (4). The human spirit, “our spirit,” “refuses tosurrender” (4). “To life-probing questionsthere seems so often to be a one-wordanswer: Auschwitz . . . Hungary . . .Attica. Vietnam” (5). “It’s remarkablehow much history there is in any smallgroup” (5). “In my teaching I neverconcealed my political views” (7).Believes in fairness, not objectivity (8).Despite “a general mood of despair” in1993, Zinn believes in the possibility of “the sudden emergence of a people’smovement” (9). “This is not a fantasy. This is how change has occurred againand again in the past” (10). Review of his own luckiness: parents, work,survival of WWII (unlike his two “closestAir Force friends,” Joe Perry and EdPlotkin): “And so I have no

right

todespair. I insist on hope. It is a feeling,yes. But it is not irrational. Peoplerespect feelings but still want reasons.. . . I have suggested that there

are

reasons. I believe there

evidence. Buttoo much to give to the questioner inKalamazoo. It would take a book. So Idecided to write one” (12).

PART ONE: THE SOUTH AND THEMOVEMENTCh. 1: Going South: SpelmanCollege.

Grad school, early teaching atUpsala College and Brooklyn College (15-16). Offered the chiarmanship of thehistory department at Spelman College;arrival in Atlanta (17). The community’stoleration of Spelman College (18-20).Students’ early memories of racialprejudice (20). Segregation (21).Successful campaign to desegregateAtlanta’s public libraries (22-24). Dr. OtisSmith’s expulsion from Fort Valley,Georgia (24-25).

Ch. 2: “Young Ladies Who CanPicket.”

Lunch counter sit-ins (26-30).Effect on family life (30-31).Observations on how people adapt tosocial change (31-33). “[N]o pitifullysmall picket line, no poorly attendedmeeting, no tossing out of an idea to anaudience or even to an individual shouldbe scorned as insignificant. The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot easily bemeasured” (33). E. Franklin Frazier’s visitto Spelman (34-35). Student movementat the lunch counter of Rich’sDepartment Store (35-36).

Ch. 3: “A President Is Like aGardener.”

Fired, despite havingtenure, by Spelman’s president, AlbertManley, for being “insubordinate.” (37-44). Support from Alice Walker, then astudent (44-45).

Ch. 4: “My Name Is Freedom”:Albany, Georgia.

Involvement withSNCC in the civil rights struggle inAlbany, Georgia, 1961-1962; Zinncontests the view that the movementwas “defeated” there (46-55).

Ch. 5: Selma, Alabama.

Zinn a SNCCadvisor for Freedom Day (Oct. 7, 1963), a

voter registration drive (56-65). Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965 (65-68).

Ch. 6: “I’ll Be Here”: Mississippi.

Working with SNCC in Freedom Summer(1963) (68-82). Civil rights movementshowed that if enough people devoteminds and bodies to a cause, it canovercome and win (82-84). Theexhilaration of the struggle, not victory,is the reward of participation (84).

PART TWO: WARCh. 7: A Veteran against War.

Enlistment and training at 20 (87-89).Courtship of Roslyn Shechter; married in1944 (89-91). Life as a bombardier (91-94). Burgeoning political consciousnessabout war (94-96). Upon furtherreflection, concludes that “while thereare certainly vicious enemies of libertyand human rights in the world, war itself is the most vicious of enemies” (98-99;96-100). “[I]ntrigued” by the nonviolentdirect action he saw in the civil rightsmovement, Zinn searches for analternative to war in fighting fascism andother radical evils (100-02).

Ch. 8: “Sometimes to Be Silent Is toLie”: Vietnam.

Early and unhesitatingopposition to the Vietnam war informedby knowledge of U.S. history (103-07).Active in antiwar movement (108-10).Writes

Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal

(1967; reissued in 2002) (110-12).Involvement with war resisters (112-14).

Ch. 9: The Last Teach-In.

Reminiscences of the antiwar movement(115-25). “[E]ducation becomes mostrich and alive when it confronts thereality of moral conflict in the world”(120). “No act, therefore, however small,should be dismissed or ignored” (124).

Ch. 10: “Our Apologies, GoodFriends, for the Fracture of GoodOrder.”

Trip to Hanoi in 1968 withDaniel Berrigan to receive three U.S.pilots (126-34). Assistance to Berriganwhile a fugitive (134-38).

PART THREE: SCENES AND CHANGESCh. 11: In Jail: “The World Is Topsy-Turvy.”

“An encounter with the police,even one night in jail, is an intense andunique educational experience” (141).1970 (142-45). 1971 (145-48). Otherarrests (148-49). “[T]he hell of the prisonsystem” (149-50).

Ch. 12: In Court: “The Heart of theMatter.”

“The courtroom is oneinstance of the fact that while our societymay be liberal and democratic in somelarge and vague sense, its moving parts,its smaller chambers—its classrooms, itsworkplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks—are flagrantlyundemocratic, dominated by onecommanding person or a tiny elite of power. . . . But the American courtroom isalso a place where people, against greatodds, may challenge the authority thatthreatens to imprison them” (151).Milwaukee Fourteen, 1968 (152-54).Camden Twenty-Eight, 1973 (154-56).Pentagon Papers trial, 1973 (156-61).Winooski Forty-Four (VT), 1984 (162).

Ch. 13: Growing Up Class-Conscious.

Family origins (163). Father, Eddie Zinn,died in 1956 (164-66). Mother, Jenny,grew up in Siberia, lived to 90 (166-68).Early reading (168). Reads

New York Post

-promoted set of Dickens (169). Firstinterest in politics (170). Beaten at firstdemonstration, “no longer a liberal . . . Iwas a radical” (173; 171-73). “MyCommunist years” began in 1939 (173-75). Wins Civil Service job in BrooklynNavy Yard, builds battleship USS

Iowa

(175-77). Disenchanted withCommunism after encounter with anti-imperialist in war and with Koestler’s

TheYogi and the Commissar

(177-78).Various jobs after the war (178). StartedNYU as freshman at age of 27 on GI Bill(179). Worked in Manhattan warehouse