In 2005, forty-one years after he was sacked from Spelman, Zinn returned to the college where he was given an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He delivered the commencement address titled, "Against Discouragement" and said that "the lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies."