Name: Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Genre: Biography, Documentary
Released: 2004
Duration: 1 min 18 s
Cast: Matt Damon

Brief Synopsis

Cast & Crew

Denis Mueller

Director

Matt Damon

Film Details

Genre

Biography

Documentary

Release Date

2004

Distribution Company

First Run Features

Technical Specs

Duration

1h 18m

Synopsis

When Howard Zinn began teaching he realized that many things were missing in American history books, so he set out to fix the discrepancy. This chronicle documents the life of the historian activist and author of the best selling classic "A People's History of the United States," an eye-opening history from the perspective of the disenfranchised, which has become a primer for the study of American history. Featuring rare archival materials, interviews with Howard Zinn as well as colleagues and friends including Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker, the film captures the essence of this activist and thinker who has been a catalyst for progressive change for more than sixty years. Archival materials follow the trajectory of Zinn's life, from his early childhood in the slums of New York, through his time as a labor organizer in shipyards in the 1930s, as well as serving in the Air Force as a bomber during World War I--an experience that was to inform and shape his anti-war outlook thereafter. Zinn took a leading role in the early Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s as a teacher at the southern black college, Spelman College, where he served as an adviser for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. His house served as a gathering place for the students who organized the protests in Atlanta. Such activity not only got him noticed by the school administrators but also by the FBI. While teaching at Boston University in the 1960s, Zinn served as a moral backbone of the peace movement. His book, "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" was one of the first anti-Vietnam books that articulated a strong argument for disengagement. Now in his eighties, Zinn has re-emerged as elder statesmen to a new generation of activists, once again providing the intellectual and moral foundation to the argument for peace.