The remainder of this post includes excerpts from his obituary at the New York Times.  Godspeed, Professor Zinn.

“A People’s History” told an openly left-wing story. Professor Zinn accused Christopher Columbus and other explorers of committing genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

…

“There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete,” Professor Zinn said. “My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”

…

Born in New York in 1922, Professor Zinn was the son of Jewish immigrants who as a child lived in a rundown area in Brooklyn and responded strongly to the novels of Charles Dickens. At age 17, urged on by some young Communists in his neighborhood, he attended a political rally in Times Square.

“Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people,” he told The A.P. “I couldn’t believe that.”

“And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant.”

…

In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women’s school in segregated Atlanta.

During the civil rights movement, Professor Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. He also published several articles, including a rare attack on the Kennedy administration, accusing it of being too slow to protect blacks.

He was loved by students — among them a young Alice Walker, who later wrote “The Color Purple.”

We’ve all watched and listened in horror to the unbelievable destruction in Haiti. Granting that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake is a devastating force, we should all be asking the question as to why the estimated death toll has skyrocketed to over 100,000 dead with countless other injuries. The greatest tragedy in Haiti has not been the earthquake itself, but the absolute lack of basic government services to support the population and insure safe living conditions for the people. This is a byproduct of rampant political instability in the country, an irony considering that it is one of the oldest republics in the Americas, gaining its independence in 1804 (that’s just 21 years after our recognized independence in 1783), and we seem to believe that democracy is the answer to any country’s political woes.

This political instability finds its source in the oppressive policies of the developed nations of the world. In order to finally gain recognition as an independent nation, Haiti had to pay “reparations” to France for the property it “stole” when it won its war of independence. Estimated at roughly $21 billion in today’s dollars, this debt wasn’t paid off until the middle of the 20 century. th To make matters worse, the U.S. refused to recognize the nation of Haiti until the end of our own Civil War, because it was a republic founded by a slave revolt. For sixty years we led an economic boycott against Haiti, effectively crippling its economy as it paid up to 80% of government revenues to France in order to service its ridiculous debt. This double whammy of debt and neglect kept Haiti from educating its people, building a safe and effective infrastructure, and developing its economy, all of which would have decreased the death toll and expedited recovery efforts.

This Sunday I preached on Paul’s image of all believers as the body of Christ – we are many members that form one body. If we truly believe this to be the case, we have to ask why we have allowed this part of our body in Haiti to be abandoned and destroyed. And if we honestly believe that they are part of the one body in which we share, we have to do more than simply write checks to aid in the recovery. It’s time to make amends for our 200 year history of being poor neighbors to Haiti by writing our congressmen and asking them to support debt forgiveness on U.S. loans made to this country. And it’s also time to ask forgiveness for our part as a nation in helping make this disaster the terrible tragedy it has become.

Jesus never promised us that the Christian walk would be an easy one.

Clint

It’s wild how easily we get sidetracked from Holy days by holidays, and how quickly we can smother our central identity in Christ with other identities such as our national identity.  The Fourth of July is one of those holidays that is a little tricky for those of us who are Christian, these peculiar people of God whose kingdom is “not of this world.”  While we want to celebrate the many freedoms and opportunities we have in these United States, we also want to be people that are honest about history, who lament the places where our country and government and founding fathers have fallen short of God’s Dream. .. so without being a real prude or “anti-American” stick-in-the-mud, we want to try to remember the history of this country well on July 4 (and every day) — the good and the bad.  That doesn’t mean we can’t have some serious fun on July 4.  We might as well take advantage of the chance to be with neighbors and family, to have work off and play in fire hydrants (at least on my block).  But above all, we want to remember that our deepest allegiance and identity run deeper than nation.  And that may take some creativity to remember with all the fireworks popping and national anthems playing.

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