Playwright, Historian and Author Howard Zinn Dies at Age 87

According to reports, Howard Zinn, the political activist and author of "A People's History of the United States," has died at the age of 87.

Born August 24, 1922 to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, Zinn was an American historian and professor emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University. He was the author of more than 20 books and was active in the civil rights, civil liberties and anti-war movements in the United States, and wrote extensively on all three subjects.

Some of the authors books included "The Southern Mystique," "LaGuardia in Congress," "The Zinn Read," and "You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train" which was the title of a documentary about Zinn in 2004. Zinn narrated a documentary titled, "The People Speak" which was based on "A People's History." The documentary aired on the History Channel in Decemeber.

Zinn was also a playwright who wrote works such as EMMA- based on the life of the early 20th century anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman, a free-spirited thinker deported from the United States by J. Edgar Hoover after World War I because of her viewpoints, including her staunch denunciations of conscription and the war. He wrote DAUGHTER OF VENUS, a family drama, during the Cold War and later edited it to make the play more topical.

His play MARX IN SOHO was a one-man play on the life of Karl Marx that has frequently been produced.

Zinn, who lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts, was traveling in California on Wednesday when he died of a heart attack. He is survived by his daughter Mylat Kabat-Zinn and son Jeff Zinn and five grandchildren.