Tom Hayden

• Tom Hayden
• Born: December 11, 1939
• Died: October 23, 2016

Was a New Left activist, anti-war activist, co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society, author of the Port Huron Statement, author of twenty books, and a California politician.

Tom Hayden was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. His father, John, worked as an accountant at Chrysler and was a former marine. His mother, Genevieve, was a homemaker. John was an abusive father and an alcoholic and the marriage dissolved. After the divorce, Tom was raised primarily by his mother.

Hayden earned a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan. He wanted to be a journalist and he served as the editor of the school newspaper his senior year. In 1960, Hayden, who was interested in politics, hitchhiked to the Democratic National Convention. At the convention he spoke with Martin Luther King, Jr., who told him, “Ultimately, you have to take a stand with your life.” King’s words inspired Hayden and he began to participate in activism in any way he could. In 1961, Hayden helped register and organize voters in Mississippi and Georgia as a field secretary for the youth branch of the League for Industrial Democracy. That year, he spent his birthday jailed in Albany, Georgia, for riding on an integrated train cart. While working as an organizer in the South, he was beaten.

When Hayden returned to Michigan, he became involved in an organization that would become the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1962, the SDS issued the Port Huron Statement, a manifesto which outlined the political agenda for a whole generation of activist youth in the 1960s. Hayden was the main author. The document was an ambitious one that combined critiques of American materialism and imperialism with a search for self-realization and personal fulfillment. The SDS called for a “participatory democracy,” where power “rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance” would be replaced by power “rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity.” The Port Huron Statement became one of the most important documents of the New Left because it reimagined the possibilities of American politics and its economic system. SDS activists tried to hand deliver the statement to the White House. They published sixty thousand copies and sold them for twenty-five cents each.

Due to his increasing activism and opposition to systems of oppression, Hayden became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. In 1965, he went on a ten-day trip to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, as a form of protest. His travel companions included the Marxist historians Herbert Aptheker and Staughton Lynd. As an attempt to discourage the trip, the State Department canceled Hayden’s passport, but it was eventually reinstated. In 1967, Hayden visited Hanoi a second time. At this point in the war, the U.S. was involved in a heavy bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. In Hanoi, Hayden had to take cover from the bombing campaign and he feared he might be killed by his own nation. During his second visit, the North Vietnamese government released three American military prisoners to him as a sign of solidarity. The U.S. government was displeased with the trip and the actions of the North Vietnamese.

In 1968, Hayden was the co-director of protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Young activists who believed that the Democratic Party had become too hawkish and pro-war descended upon Chicago in an attempt to disrupt and protest the convention. Even though President Lyndon B. Johnson ushered through the largest slate of social programs since the New Deal, he also increased American involvement in the Vietnam War and was disliked by many young activists. At the convention, there were two more liberal choices for the presidential nomination, Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, both who were anti-war. The Democrats instead chose Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as the Democratic nominee. Activists saw this choice as a vote for more war.

Activists planned to march up Michigan Avenue in Chicago on August 28 in protest. However, Hayden and Rennie Davis, the other director of the protest, were denied protest permits by Mayor Richard J. Daley. They decided to march anyway. The activists were met by twelve thousand Chicago Police Department officers, six thousand Army troops, and five thousand National Guardsman. Violence ensued as soldiers and cops beat and clubbed protestors and shot tear gas into the air. Even journalists and by-standers were attacked by the forces. All of this was televised in living rooms across the nation.

Hayden was charged for conspiracy to incite a riot by the Department of Justice under the order of the new president, Richard Nixon. He was part of a group of seven charged that came to be known as the “Chicago Seven.” Hayden was found guilty for traveling across state lines to incite a riot and was sentenced to five years in prison. The case was overturned in 1972 because of clear biases and the Department of Justice never re-tried the case.

Hayden continued his anti-war activism. In 1972, he went on a ninety-city speaking tour against the war with actress Jane Fonda. Fonda had become an outspoken anti-war activist and had also visited Hanoi in 1972. The couple was married in 1973, but divorced in 1990.

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hayden tried his hand in electoral politics. In 1976, he ran for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in California. He lost the primary to the incumbent, John V. Tunney. His election experience led him to his next project, the Campaign for Economic Democracy. Hayden and Fonda created it to fund candidates and causes, like rent control, renewable energy, and divestment from apartheid. Their efforts allowed liberals to win offices statewide, and led to the passage of Proposition 65, a measure that required signs in gas stations, grocery stores, and bars that warned of cancer-causing chemicals.

In 1982, Hayden was elected to the California State Assembly. He represented a wealthy district that included Santa Monica, Malibu, and the Westside of Los Angeles. He would remain in the assembly until 1992. In 1992, he was elected State Senator, a post in which he served until 2000. Hayden was able to win with the help of his wife, Fonda, who funded almost all of his campaigns.

Despite his political successes, Hayden also experienced defeats. In 1994, Hayden ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, but lost in the primary. He ran for mayor in Los Angeles in 1997 but lost. In 2001, he sought to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, but lost in the runoff primary.

Hayden was an outspoken anti-war activist during the 1960s. The Port Huron Statement he penned inspired many young people across the nation and it remains a prescient and powerful political document today. He believed that youth did not need to wait to take leadership roles in transforming society. They were obligated to participate early and often.

For further reading see Tom Hayden’s memoir Reunion: A Memoir (1988). For histories of the SDS and the New Left see Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (1999), Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (2000), David Barber, Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why it Failed (2008), Richard Flacks and Nelson Lichtenstein, The Port Huron States: Sources and Legacies of the New Left’s Founding Manifesto (2015).