In the summer of 1960, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had 29 members, a grant of $10,000 from Detroit's United Automobile Workers Union and an earnest commitment to social change.
Nine years, 610 members and 19 chapters later, the group's Harvard-Radcliffe chapter would stage a protest that would define a political era at the University.
The great success of the group ended violently when a March 6, 1970 explosion killed members of its final permutation, the Weather Underground, who were assembling pipe bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse.
Between its birth and demise, however, its impact shaped a generation. It organized actions ranging from inner-city employment programs to massive peace marches, garnering praise, criticism and national media coverage along the way.
All this was generated by an organization composed mostly of students from prestigious, Northern liberal-arts colleges. What they had in common was a desire to change the world.
"It was something about the generation that grew up in the '60s in the midst of extraordinary affluence, that led us to expect something from the world that generations before us hadn't expected: a level of personal fulfillment and freedom, and the therapeutic gratification that society didn't make easy to maintain," says Alan Brinkley, professor of history at Columbia University and a former Harvard faculty member.
"A lot of the protests were not just against social injustice, but a fight against the obstacles to personal fulfillment," Brinkley says.
The Port Huron Statement, the group's 1962 manifesto written after a conference in Port Huron, Mich., addressed issues ranging from nuclear weapons stockpiling to the two party system. For SDS, all of these issues indicated that American society was fundamentally flawed.
The statement also contained a commitment to the principles of participatory democracy, the hallmark of SDS's early actions and later the source of many of its troubles.
The essence of participatory democracy, early leaders argued, was that all individuals had a fundamental right to help determine the course of their own lives. "Men have unrealized potential forself-cultivation, self-direction,self-understanding and creativity," SDS memberTom Hayden wrote in the Port Huron statement. "Itis this potential that we regard as crucial and towhich we appeal." For Hayden, now a state senator fromCalifornia, and for the others, self-determinationwas prized commodity. Students at some America'smost privileged institutions of higher learningwere complaining in growing numbers that theirUniversities were insentive to their concerns andinterested only in creating another generation ofwealthy alumni. "The University," Todd Gitlin '63 said in aninterview for Kirkpatrick Sale's book SDS,"begins to feel like a cage." Harvard was doing little to alleviate thisfeeling. Many administrators worked under thedoctrine of in loco parentis, attempting tofunctions as parents and regulate every aspect ofstudents' lives. Early '60s In the beginning of the decade, theadministrators' traditional outlook kept studentsfrom publicy protesting university policies. Anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote in 1961 thatstudents saw conformity as the key to conventionalsuccess: "[S]tatistics on national contests forscholarships and for admissions to especiallydesirable institutions have increased thewidespread sense that to succeed today it isnecessary to conform and to complete in terms ofnational norm." SDS wanted to change that. In the grandiloquentphrases of hard-core idealists, the SDSersproclaimed their humanism at the Port Huronconference, writing that individualism "imprintsone's individual qualities in relatons to othermen, and to all human activity." Early SDS projects emphasized members'commitment to social change and groupdecision-making. Volunteers moved to low-incomeareas of northern cities such as Chicago, wherethey attempted to organize unemployed neighborhoodresident and live according to the principles ofparticipatory democracy. The project, known as Economic Research andAction Project (ERAP), caused substantial changein a few cases. In Chester, Penn., for example, aSwarthmore ERAP group successfully pressured thelocal government and school board for a variety ofreforms. Many of these students had spent the summerlearning about activism and facing tear gas inMaryland under the Student Non-violentCoordinating Coalition (SNCC). The coalition, theother major activist group during the decade,sponsored protests against segreation and drivesfor voting in the South. SNCC had the tightdiscipline and organization that SDS'sparticipatory democracy often undermined. During the activists' 10 days of protest in thestreets of Chester, 57 students were arrested.These arrests represented the first large-scalestudent strike by any white, Northern campusgroup. The Money Problem SDS has 610 paid members and 19 officialchapters, and the 17-member Harvard-Radcliffebranch was one of the largest. The group did not, however, have a coherentnational agenda, between the grand goalsarticulated in the Port Huron Statement and thefrustrating reality of grass-roots organizing forERAP projects lay gap that was a source ofconstant debate. SDS was surviving on a monthly total of about$600 in dues and contributions, plus theoccasional more generous donation. And it was nearly impossible for anorganization whose typical members were young,full-time students with a disdain for thetrappings of capitalism to become a fundraisingpowerhouse. But in 1963, they got what they needed. The events of 1963, including the Kennedyassassination and the escalating conflict inVietnam, radicalized students as noconsciousness-raising session could. SDS alredyhad unofficial chapters whose members organizedunder the SDS aegis without bothering to submitrecords or pay official dues. By the start of the1964-65 school year, the list of official chaptershad grown to 29. And they showed it. At the University ofCalifornia Berkeley, 500 students--both liberaland conservative--marched on Sproul Hall onSeptember 14 to protest a university memorandumforbidding groups to offer literature on a campussidewalk. Eight were arrested after an all-nightsit-in, and other students began activelysolicting on the sidewalk in deliberate defianceof the new rules. Threats of disciplinary action by theUniversity prompted a second sit-in in SproulHall. About 800 students entered the building andremained there until the state governor, facingconservative pressure, sent in more than 600police officers to remove the demonstrators. The use of force was a fatal mistake. Within afew days, 16,000 angry students and faculty hadshut down the Berkeley campus. Although university regents acquiesced to thestrikers' demands and reopened the campus beforewinter vacation, the damage was already done. In Ioco parentis had given way to a newparadigm in student-administrator interactions: asformer Berkeley student Jack Weinstein said,"Don't trust anyone over 30." "It was an enormous range of grievances thatall came together during these uprisings,"Brinkely says. "It was an effort to shake up thegoverning structure of the university and,indirectly, society." While Berkeley students were protesting, SDSinitiated a new organizational structure, with tenregional organizers to coordinate chapteractivities. No SDSers were at the forefront of the freespeech movement at Berkeley. But SDS leadersrecognized the importance of the student strike of1964 and many met with Berkeley leaders to learnabout their activist techniques and offer support. After President Lyndon B. Johnson launchedbombing raids on northern Vietnam and called forincreases in the draft in February 1965, smallSDS-run demonstrations cropped up across thecountry. SDS officers scrambled to hire more assistantsand began to plan a rally in Washington D.C. forApril 17, 1965. The march brought together across-section of the New Left, with groups fromthe National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policyto the Young People's Socialist League clamoringto join in. The Washington demonstration was the largestpeace march in American history. As many as 25,000people (estimates vary) from at least 50 collegesand universities assembled behind the WashingtonMonument to hear singers, speakers and theobligatory SDS representatives. Coverage of the march gave SDS nationalpublicity and a new period of growth. More than 80chapters and 2,000 official members were on thebooks by the end of the 1965 academic year. Thatsummer, the annual national convention drew 450participants. The newcomers brought a different style to theorganization. Many had been involved in otherorganizations and were more interested in socialaction than in social theory. They were infantryin the new, hierarchical SDS that grew out of themarch. The newcomers also gave SDS a willingness toengage in the politics of confrontation anddisobedience rather than those of reasoneddissent. Many of them were not even universitystudents. SDS was now fully focused on the war inVietnam, planning regular protests. In the weekfollowing a sit-in at the Ann Arbor draft board,the national office received 1,000 newmemberships. But the tension between SDS veterans and newermembers was increasing. The students' protests hadplaced the league's tax-exempt status at risk. After the split, SDS continued to grow, with anational budget of almost $80,000 a year. The Draft In the spring of 1955, Lewis B. Hershey,director of the Selective Service System, longerbe granted automatic deferments from the draft.Instead, eligibility to serve in the militarywould be determined by class rank withinindividual colleges and by a national draft examgiven to all male undergraduates. Using fact sheets about the war, the SDSnational office initiated a brief and largelyunsuccessful movement against the national exam. But the group's efforts to force universitiesto withhold class rankings from the military weremuch more effective. In February, a studentcommittee at Harvard containing several SDSmembers moved to block the release of class data,while spontaneous demonstrations and sit-ins brokeout in schools across the country. At the University of Chicago, SDS membersgathered 800 signatures on a petition opposed theranking. After the administration ignored it, theSDS chapter at Chicago sponsored a sit-in, and onMay 11, 1966, 400 students enteress the mainadministration building and remained there forfive days. Though the faculty and administration neveragreed to theirdemands, the University of Chicagoprotest inspired imitators. Anti-rankingdemonstrations occurred at almost a quarter of UScolleges in the 1967-1968 academic year. The Aftermath of Columbia The 1968 protest at Columbia University markedthe first instance of massive police violenceagainst campus activists(please see sidebar,this page). In the wake of the Columbia strike, SDSorganizers grew bolder. And college students,seeing their administrations' willingness to useviolence against them, joined activist groups insteadily increasing numbers. During the late '60s, SDS sponsored numerousactivities campuses: passing out information,heckling pro-war speakers, protesting recruitersfrom companies involved in the Vietnam conflictand organizing acts of civil disobedience. Despite the group's popularity, many studentsstood against SDS. Even at college with largechapters, more students criticized the activiststhan praised them. At Harvard, which had some 300active SDS members, the group came under constantfire. The 1970 edition of the American Council onEducation report contained a survey showing that44.9 percent of male undergraduates who entereduniversities in 1967 felt that administrators weretoo lax on protesters. Of men who entereduniversities in 1969--the year after the Columbiastrike--60.8 percent felt administrators were toollenient. Still, students were protesting more often. AndSDS members no longer had to radicalize enteringfirst-years. In 1969, more than 44 percent of male collegefirst-years had protested against military policy,racial policy or their schools' administrativepolicy while in high school. And almost 16 percent said there was "a very good chance" theywould participate in a protests while in college. So in the spring of 1969, when Harvard studentsbegan to organize, SDS would be ready.
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