Tom Hayden, Civil Rights and Antiwar Activist Turned Lawmaker, Dies at 76 (better article)
Tom Hayden, Civil Rights and Antiwar Activist Turned Lawmaker, Dies at 76
By ROBERT D. McFADDENOCT. 24, 2016
C
CreditJ. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
Tom Hayden, who burst out of the 1960s counterculture as a radical leader of America’s civil rights and antiwar movements, but rocked the boat more gently later in life with a progressive political agenda as an author and California state legislator, died on Sunday. He was 76.
His wife, Barbara Williams, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. Mr. Hayden had been suffering from heart problems and fell ill while attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.
During the racial unrest and antiwar protests of the ’60s and early ’70s, Mr. Hayden was one of the nation’s most visible radicals. He was a founder of Students for a Democratic Society, a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial after riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and a peace activist who married Jane Fonda, went to Hanoi and escorted American prisoners of war home from Vietnam.
As a civil rights worker, he was beaten in Mississippi and jailed in Georgia. In his cell he began writing what became the Port Huron Statement, the political manifesto of S.D.S. and the New Left that envisioned an alliance of college students in a peaceful crusade to overcome what it called repressive government, corporate greed and racism. Its aim was to create a multiracial, egalitarian society.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/us/tom-hayden-dead.html?_r=0
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Saw him and Fonda briefly at a raucous reception at Scholz' Garten in the early 70s. She came in, carrying her newly-born child, to loud carrying-ons at the old biergarten (estb 1866). She was invited after Larry Bales, state rep from Austin, cast the one dissenting vote in a resolution condemning her for posing on a N. Vietnamese AA gun (admittedly, a stupid move). Outside, two black cars with ruby-eyed infrared cameras recorded the party. Those were the daze.
The old activists like Hayden were models as much for continuing their activism in later life as for supporting any one cause or era. It was a way of life.
Rest in peace.
