Lee Dunham Webb came from a working-class New England background and was educated at Andover School and Boston University. He spent his summers working as a laborer and was a peace activist at Boston University in 1962 when he was enlisted by Robb Burlage as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. Webb quickly rose through the SDS ranks, and at the 1963 convention was elected National Secretary and National Council member. He had a role in organizing SDS's Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP), initiated in September 1963 and reorganized early in 1964 with Rennie Davis as project head. The immediate goal of ERAP was to form projects of students in several cities to work during the summer of 1964 toward the formation of grass roots political organizations. Although ERAP's success was hard-won and the projects quickly became isolated from other SDS activities, the organizers did manage to raise funds from the United Auto Workers and the Packinghouse Workers Union. With the Packinghouse Workers Union, the SDS set up the Chicago Jobs or Income Now (JOIN) program in 1964; Webb joined the staff shortly thereafter. Webb had moved to Chicago to work with the Urban Training Center religious group, as required alternate service under the terms of his Conscientious Objector draft status. He also continued to work for SDS in the Illinois-Wisconsin area during 1964.
Early in 1965 Webb left the now-faltering JOIN organization to work full-time as a campus organizer in preparation for the April 17, 1965, March on Washington in protest against the Vietnam War. Later that year he joined in the formation of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP), led by Arthur Waskow; Webb served on the NCNP national board. Webb's involvement with SDS continued through this period, and he ran unsuccessfully for president in 1966. However, by this time he (and other early leaders from the period of the Port Huron Statement in 1962) had been all but swept aside as the "old guard" by younger members with a different political philosophy.
In 1967 Webb became executive director of the Vietnam Summer project, a liberal movement to make the middle class throughout the country aware of and united behind the anti-Vietnam war effort. Although Vietnam Summer was viewed with suspicion by the leadership of SDS, several older SDS members joined the project. Following Vietnam Summer, Webb took a position with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he was a sponsor at the organization of the New University Conference, and that same year, worked as an organizer for the National Mobilization Committee prior to the riots at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Since the late 1960s, Webb's work has taken several directions. He has worked with The Guardian in Washington, and spent several years teaching at Goddard College in Vermont. Later he was associated with the Conference on Alternative State and Local Public Policies in Washington, D.C.
For more information refer to the records of the Students for a Democratic Society, the papers of Robb Burlage and Arthur Waskow, and Kirkpatrick Sale's history entitled SDS (New York, Random House, 1973).
