Howard Zinn

On art and politics from the book  The Future of History

    "I think that art and politics enhance one another. Art is inevitably political - I know that's a big discussion - because it has an effect on the world and it comes out of the world as it is. I think for anybody who's interested in political and social issues, art plays a very special role in enhancing statements that otherwise would be prosaic and dull, in lending passion to something, to facts that need something more than simple statements. Movements have always been given enormous stimulus and inspiration by art and artists. The trade union movement has been helped enormously by music, by labor union songs. The civil rights movement, there's no way of escaping the power, sitting in a church in Selma, of a Selma freedom chorus in building up the courage of black people in Dallas County, knowing that the next day they were going to face state troopers and the sheriff, and the power of song just swept people into a kind of recognition that they could do what they thought they couldn't do." Howard Zinn on the Web