[Howard Zinn raw #34: Zinn and Dennis Mueller speak on Civil Rights, social classes, and human nature]

Filmmaker Denis Mueller interviews Howard Zinn. They discuss Howard's early life and his thoughts on class and human nature.

0:30Copy video clip URL Howard Zinn and filmmaker Denis Mueller discuss Zinn’s recent speaking engagements and travel plans.

0:58Copy video clip URL Zinn says he and his wife are traveling to New York tomorrow to visit family and take in the city. “You can’t walk a block in New York without seeing something interesting.”

3:26Copy video clip URL Zinn explains how he ended up working at Spelman College by way of the Columbia University placement bureau. He talks about the subdued atmosphere of the college when he arrived.

7:05Copy video clip URL Howard Zinn discusses how he and his students worked together and developed a project to tackle racial segregation in Atlanta’s public library system in the late 1950s. “There was no one leader in that process… students, I helped, Whitney Young helped, and that’s the way it was with so much of this.” He talks about how SNCC and the Civil Rights movement sprung out from these student activities.

18:48Copy video clip URL Zinn speaks on the bravery of students and other ordinary people who executed the sit-ins and marches of the civil rights movement. He talks about Fannie Lou Hamer and the violence faced by black Americans and civil rights activists.

24:17Copy video clip URL Zinn talks about the origin of his political development: getting taken by some local communists to a demonstration in Times Square and being attacked by police.

30:37Copy video clip URL Zinn reflects on his time working as a shipfitter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

35:21Copy video clip URL Zinn talks about class and class consciousness. He discusses how Charles Dickens inspired him to become a writer and to better understand poverty.

39:15Copy video clip URL Howard Zinn recounts meeting his wife Roslyn, writing letters back and forth as he trained during WWII, and getting married while on leave.

44:28Copy video clip URL Zinn talks about the bombing of Hiroshima and how he learned later that it wasn’t a necessary military tactic to offset the need for an invasion.

47:52Copy video clip URL Zinn discusses the notion that greed, violence, and selfishness are “human nature.” He rejects the idea that wars come about from the wills of ordinary people rather than the ruling elite. He uses Woodrow Wilson and World War One as an example.

57:49Copy video clip URL Filmmaker Denis Mueller asks Zinn if he was influenced by existentialism.