Howard Zinn Critical Essay | Critical Review by Allan R. Brockway

Critical Review by Allan R. Brockway

SOURCE: Brockway, Allan R. “Modern Abolitionists.” Christian Century 81, no. 48 (25 November 1964): 1464.

In the following review of SNCC: The New Abolitionists, Brockway praises Zinn's hopeful account of the activities of the young leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Social revolutions result from a complex mixture of factors combining at a particular point in history to force change toward ends that, for all their immediate concreteness, often reach far beyond themselves. Such is the case with the Negro revolution today. And such is the case with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”), one of the most vocal, “radical” and activist manifestations of that revolt.

Howard Zinn has lived with SNCC as a teacher of some of its leaders, as an observer and, to some extent, as a participant. His book is filled with personal accounts of these young fighters in the revolution's front line. It...
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