Organize the South

Dear Dr. Zinn:

I just learned that you have passed away. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself, yet again, that I need you to write you this letter. I have been wanting to write you this letter for the last two years, but I’ve always put it off. This letter is a request for advice, but also a chance to connect. For the last two years I’ve thought it was something I needed to get to “someday.”

This last January I started my senior year in college. I am what is known as a “non-traditional student.” This means I’m old. I started my freshman year in 1988 and took a semester off for almost 20 years. Now I’m about to turn 40 and completing my bachelors. I think you would be able to understand since you didn’t start college until you were 27. Frankly, I have no regrets most of the time. Yes, a younger back would be nice when the books get heavy, but I learned some things in my hiatus. I worked on community organizing, environmental, labor, and anti-poverty campaigns. I worked as a popular educator and a freelance writer. I traveled a lot and met great people. Although my formal education stopped, my actual education began.

Of course, nothing I did during the last 20 years prepared me for retirement. As it’s structured now, being a low-paid organizer working 70-100 hours per week doesn’t lend oneself to longevity. I don’t need to always be paid to organize, but I do need a job. When I spent a summer thinking about what I love to do, I thought about history. I love researching history. I decided I want to be a darker-skinned Howard Zinn, or a lighter-skinned Robin D.G. Kelley.

To be honest, I’m not sure exactly how this goal transfers into a job. I think the basic principle is that I want to spend time on intellectual work, writing and such, but I want it to be in service of organizing. An interesting scholarly question, divorced from the realities of campaigns for social justice, doesn’t interest me. This is where I was going to ask you for advice. Given the collapse of the academic job market does it make sense for me to go for a Ph.D.? College administrations have never been real accepting of professors mixing it up in organizing. What tips do you have for those fights? Academia is all about specialization, but that seems contrary to social justice work. Does it make sense to focus on one thing or move as things change? Is it better to think of myself as a historian with a connection to organizing or an organizer specializing in history? Is this just semantics?

Sending this letter now seems odd. Those questions, when they weren’t written out, seemed really important. But now it looks trivial. When I think back about your life it looks to me like you did what you thought was best and found a way to pay the rent later. Frankly, that’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years and it seems to be working for me too.

Thanks for the advice. I’m sorry it took me so long to write. I will miss you. Rest well.

Sincerely,

Daniel