Tom Hayden

Born December 12, 1940
Royal Oak, Michigan

American political activist; cofounder
of the radical antiwar group Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS)

Tom Hayden became a political activist during his college days, when he co-founded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Through this organization, he was involved in the social protests of the 1960s, including the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement. In 1968 Hayden helped organize a major demonstration against the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The demonstration turned into a violent confrontation between protestors and Chicago police. Afterward, Hayden and seven other activists—who became known as the Chicago Eight—were put on trial for causing the riot. Once the war ended, Hayden became active in politics in California.

Becomes a student activist

Thomas Emmett Hayden was born on December 12, 1940, in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He was the only child in a working-class Catholic family. His father, an accountant, left the family when Tom was a child. From that time on, his mother supported him by working as a librarian. Hayden first showed his rebellious nature in high school. As editor of the student newspaper, he often got in trouble for criticizing school officials and policies in his editorials.

In 1957 Hayden enrolled at the University of Michigan as a journalism major. He became a writer for the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. Within a short time, however, Hayden grew frustrated with the rules guiding student conduct, which he viewed as unclear and strict. "You couldn't find out what the rules were or how to change them," he recalled. He felt that the students should have more say in their own education, but he was not sure how they could achieve this.

In the summer of 1960 Hayden hitchhiked to California. He was unhappy with many aspects of American life at this time. He thought that Americans placed too much importance on material possessions and felt that everyone seemed to want to look and act like everyone else. Longing to be different, he at first intended to become a dropout rebel like the hero of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. But his experiences in California helped direct him toward radical politics as a way to bring social change.

During his trip Hayden witnessed the poverty of migrant farm workers. He learned about the nuclear weapons research that was taking place because of the military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. And he met student radicals who led protests at the University of California at Berkeley and interviewed civil rights protesters who held demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. All of these experiences added to Hayden's determination to work toward change in American society. "I became a revolutionary in bits and pieces," he stated. "It was a cumulative process in which one commitment led to another."

Forms Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

When he returned to the University of Michigan for his senior year, Hayden joined a group of fellow students in forming Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS was intended to be a national organization that would coordinate the political involvement of college students around the country. As editor of the Michigan Daily during his senior year, Hayden began encouraging other students to become activists. He urged them to work to end poverty, racism, the military arms race, and other problems in American society.

Hayden graduated from college in 1961 and spent the next year working as a volunteer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This organization was dedicated to helping African Americans in their fight for civil rights and social justice. In 1962 he wrote the first draft of the Port Huron Manifesto, a document outlining the basic principles of SDS. The document began, "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." It went on to call for a more democratic American government that would represent individuals and communities, rather than business interests and the upper class.

Later that year, Hayden returned to the University of Michigan to complete a master's degree in sociology. He also served as the president of SDS during this time. In 1964 he established the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). This special SDS program was intended to help poor people in the nation's inner cities. As part of ERAP, Hayden lived in an all-black area of Newark, New Jersey. Along with other activists, he tried to organize the local people to pressure the city government for changes. For example, they worked to convince the city to build playgrounds, repair roads, and provide jobs for local residents. Hayden found his job difficult, however, because many residents tended to be suspicious of him and the other SDS members.

Leads protests against the Vietnam War

By the mid-1960s Hayden had begun to turn his attention to protesting against American involvement in the Vietnam War. This conflict pitted the Communist nation of North Vietnam and its secret allies, the South Vietnamese Communists known as the Viet Cong, against the U.S.-supported nation of South Vietnam. North Vietnam wanted to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and reunite the two countries under one Communist government. But U.S. government officials felt that a Communist government in Vietnam would increase the power of the Soviet Union and threaten the security of the United States.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the U.S. government sent money, weapons, and military advisors to help South Vietnam defend itself against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson (see entry) sent American combat troops to join the fight on the side of South Vietnam. But deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed to defeat the Communists. Instead, the war turned into a bloody stalemate. As the war dragged on, the American public became bitterly divided about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Like many other Americans, Hayden felt that the U.S. government's actions were wrong. He did not think that the United States should interfere with the reunification of Vietnam. Instead, he believed that the Vietnamese people should be allowed to decide their own future. In 1965 Hayden visited North Vietnam with a group of other antiwar activists. The idea behind his visit was to establish a connection between the American peace movement and the North Vietnamese government. Hayden knew that some people would view him as a traitor for meeting with the enemy. But he believed that the best way to support the U.S. troops was to end the war as quickly as possible.

During his visit to the capital city of Hanoi, Hayden was deeply moved by the destruction and suffering caused by American bombing. Upon returning to the United States, he expressed admiration for the strength and revolutionary spirit of the North Vietnamese people. He wrote a book about his experiences, The Other Side, to try to inform the American people about "what our government was doing in this small country eight thousand miles away."

Member of the Chicago Eight

By 1966 Hayden had become a leading figure in the radical antiwar movement. He made speeches on college campuses and appeared at antiwar demonstrations across the country. In 1967 he left the ERAP program in Newark after the city was rocked by a series of riots. At this point, Hayden dedicated all his time and energy to the antiwar movement.

Hayden began working with the leaders of other antiwar groups, including the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), to organize a huge protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At this convention, representatives of the Democratic political party planned to select their candidate for the presidency and formulate the Vietnam policy they would present in their upcoming campaign.

When the Democrats met in the summer of 1968, thousands of protestors showed up outside the convention hall. Many people—including Hayden—made angry, antigovernment speeches. In Chicago '68 he is quoted as calling the U.S. government "an outlaw institution under the control of war criminals." As the protests went on, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (see entry) sent his police force to control the demonstrators. But many law officers used brutal force against the protestors, and the confrontations escalated into an ugly riot. Scenes of fights between antiwar activists and police officers dominated television newscasts and overshadowed the convention.

Instead of trying to stop the violence, Hayden urged the people of Chicago to rise up against the police and the city government. "The city and the military machinery it has aimed at us won't permit us to protest in an organized fashion," he stated. "We must turn this overheated military machine against itself. Let us make sure if blood flows, it flows all over the city." In the end, more than a thousand protestors and two hundred police officers were injured in the fighting.

A year later, Hayden and seven other organizers of the demonstrations—known in the media as the Chicago Eight—were put on trial for conspiracy to cause a riot. But the antiwar activists repeatedly disrupted the trial with loud outbursts and disobedient behavior. At one point, they even draped a Viet Cong flag over their table. In addition, they used the trial to present their political views. As the six-month trial progressed, it turned into a chaotic media circus.

In February 1970 Hayden was found guilty on several charges and sentenced to five years in prison. But he appealed the judge's decision, and his conviction was overturned. Later that year, he wrote a popular book, Trial, about his experience as a member of the Chicago Eight.

Works for change from within the government

At its peak, Hayden's SDS organization had around four hundred campus chapters and was very active in the civil rights and antiwar movements. In the early 1970s, however, SDS split into smaller groups as its members argued over the organization's main focus. When this happened, Hayden continued protesting against the Vietnam War outside of SDS, writing wrote several books and articles expressing his views of the U.S. government and its policies.

In 1973 Hayden married actress Jane Fonda (see entry), who had also become a well-known antiwar activist. Together they formed a new organization, the Indochina Peace Campaign, to work toward ending the war. When the U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam later that year, Hayden continued pressuring the government to reduce its financial support for South Vietnam.

After the Vietnam War ended in victory for North Vietnam in 1975, Hayden changed the focus of his activism. Rather than trying to change the government from the outside, he decided to run for public office in order to try to make the government more democratic from within. He joined the Democratic political party and ran for the U.S. Senate from California in 1976, but he lost in the primary. He was elected to the California state legislature a short time later and served throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 1997 he launched an unsuccessful campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles.

Sources

Farber, David. Chicago '68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Findley, Tom. "Tom Hayden Rolling Stone Interview." Rolling Stone, October 26, 1972 (Part 1), November 9, 1972 (Part 2).

Garfinkle, Adam. Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Hayden, Tom. Reunion: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1988.

Wells, Tom. The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan.Who Spoke Up? American Protest against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.

Bobby Seale (1936– )

Black activist Bobby Seale was one of the members of the Chicago Eight. Born on October 22, 1936, Robert George Seale grew up in a poor area of Oakland, California. After dropping out of high school in his senior year, he joined the U.S. Air Force, where he was trained as an aircraft sheet-metal mechanic. But he received a dishonorable discharge after three years of service when he disobeyed an officer. Seale then completed his high school education at night while holding a day job as a sheet-metal mechanic. In 1959, he entered Merritt College in Oakland. It was during his time as a college student that he became involved in the civil rights movement.

During his college years, Seale joined a student group called the Afro-American Association. Through this group he met Huey Newton, who introduced him to the writings of black nationalist leaders like Malcolm X. Over time, Seale grew increasingly angry about the unfair treatment of blacks in American society. He eventually came to believe that blacks could not rely on the U.S. justice system to protect them from violence and discrimination at the hands of whites. Instead, he felt that African Americans should band together and use armed resistance to gain equal rights.

In October 1966, Seale and Newton founded the Black Panther Party. The goal of this radical organization was to defy white authority and demand representation for blacks in the American political system. The Black Panthers also fought to improve living conditions for blacks and to end police brutality in black neighborhoods. In May 1967, they came to national attention by staging a protest in the California State Legislature. The legislature was debating a proposal that would prohibit carrying guns in public. But the Black Panthers believed that African Americans needed to arm themselves against white authority. They protested against the proposal by showing up at a legislative session heavily armed with rifles and handguns. Seale was arrested for disrupting the legislature and spent six months in jail. The protest increased the Black Panthers' popularity among African Americans, but also made it a controversial and feared organization among many whites.

In 1968, Seale began trying to form alliances with radical white leaders, many of whom were involved in protests against the Vietnam War. Some black activists wanted African Americans to fight their own battles, separately from whites. But Seale felt that joining forces with other protest groups could only help his cause. As he told Wallace Terry in Time, "You don't fight racism with racism. The best way to fight racism is with solidarity [joining together]." Under his guidance, the Black Panthers joined several other radical organizations in forming the Peace and Freedom Party. Newton became the party's candidate for president in the 1968 elections.

The Democratic Party held a convention in Chicago that year to select its candidate for the presidency. Antiwar activists organized a major demonstration outside the convention hall. Seale appeared at the demonstration and gave an emotional speech about the treatment of blacks in American society. As the protests deteriorated into a violent struggle with Chicago police, Seale was arrested. He and seven prominent antiwar activists were put on trial in September 1969 on charges of inciting (causing) a riot. The American media dubbed the group—which also included David Dellinger (see entry), Tom Hayden, and Abbie Hoffman (see entry)—the Chicago Eight.

Shortly before the trial began, Seale's attorney underwent surgery. Seale asked Judge Julius Hoffman to delay the trial until his lawyer could recover, but the judge refused. Then Seale requested that he be allowed to represent himself, but the judge ordered him to use the same attorney as the other seven defendants. Feeling that his rights had been violated, Seale refused to cooperate with the court proceedings. The other defendants viewed the trial—and the media attention it attracted—as an opportunity to present their views about the Vietnam War. They continually disrupted the proceedings with outbursts and angry speeches. The judge responded by repeatedly finding them in contempt of court.

Finally, Judge Hoffman declared a mistrial in Seale's case and agreed to try him separately from the other defendants, who then became known as the Chicago Seven. Seale was later found guilty of 16 counts of contempt of court and sentenced to four years in prison. But the charges were dropped in 1972, after he had served two years of his term.

By the 1970s, Seale led the Black Panthers away from armed confrontation. He concentrated the organization's efforts on community assistance programs, like building health clinics in poor neighborhoods and providing breakfast for inner-city children. In 1973, he ran for mayor of Oakland as a Democrat and finished second out of nine candidates. The following year, Seale left the Black Panthers and formed Advocates Scene, a group dedicated to helping poor people and minorities become involved in grassroots politics. He published his autobiography, A Lonely Rage, in 1978.