Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd mentoring student activists, among them Alice Walker, who would later write "The Color Purple," and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. Edelman identified Zinn as a major influence in her life and, in that same journal article, tells of his accompanying students to a sit-in at the segregated white section of the Georgia state legislature. Zinn also co-wrote a column in "The Boston Globe" with fellow activist Eric Mann, "Left Field Stands."