Howard Zinn obituary   Victoria Brittain: Howard Zinn's lesson
to us all Howard Zinn in 2006 Photograph: Dima Gavrysh/AP
Howard Zinn, who has died of a heart attack aged 87, was a much-
loved and much-vituperated icon of the American left. He was an
activist and historian, and later a dramatist, but always
a courageous and articulate campaigner for his vision of a just
and peaceful America.  As a white teacher at the black Spelman
College for women in Atlanta, Georgia, he was a mentor to and
later the historian of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating
Committee (SNCC), the radical student wing of the civil rights
movement. In 1963 he was dismissed from Spelman for advocating a
less "ladylike" concept of women's education, and moved to
Boston University, where he taught political science for 24
years.  In 1980 he published A People's History of the United
States, an account that stressed injustices and oppression and
resurrected forgotten voices, which has sold more than 1m
copies.  Zinn always said he was not