The origins of SDS go back to the 1905 founding of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society,
renamed the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) in 1920. LID stressed the introduction of
socialist thought on college campuses through tours by speakers like Jack London, Harry
Laidler, and Norman Thomas; and through the publication and distribution of socialist
literature. From its beginnings, LID also organized affiliated student groups which carried
on educational programs. In the 1920s and early 1930s, students participated in LID through
the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), which had partial autonomy from LID.
During the period 1936-1939, SLID ignored the admonitions of LID and joined with the
Communist youth group, the National Student League, to form the American Student Union.
Throughout much of its history, SLID also maintained close ties with the Young Peoples'
Socialist League (YPSL), the youth arm of the Socialist Party.
The SLID which emerged after World War II had closer supervision from LID; Communists and
other radical-socialists were excluded. During the 1950s, SLID suffered a decline in numbers
common to many liberal and radical student groups; by the middle of the decade, it had a few
hundred, mostly inactive, members. It would have surely collapsed completely if not for
money from LID and the efforts of a few stalwart supporters like James Farmer, later a
leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), who as LID's student secretary in the
early 1950s aided SLID.
During the 1950s, LID and SLID turned away from explicitly socialist politics. LID became
dependent on American labor unions for funding, much of which was earmarked for campus
educational programs that were designed to gain student support for unions and for
progressive measures advocated by labor leaders and liberal politicians. This program,
however, had little impact on the campuses.
At its annual national meeting in 1960, SLID changed its name to the Students for a
Democratic Society, and began to organize a movement whose purpose was to meaningfully
involve people in the political, social, and economic issues that affected their lives. The
main impetus for change came that year when Robert (Al) Haber became SDS's president. Haber
in the spring of 1960 organized a conference at the University of Michigan which was
attended by representatives of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), James
Farmer of CORE, and the Catholic-socialist Michael Harrington. This conference began SDS's
long association with SNCC and at it were recruited some of the persons who came to lead SDS
in the period 1961-1966. Yet SDS remained practically non-existent during the 1960-1961
school year.
In the fall of 1961, Paul Potter and Tom Hayden, both future presidents of SDS, went South
to participate in the burgeoning civil rights movement. Both were beaten by white mobs and
returned to the North determined to organize further assaults upon racism. In June of 1962
at SDS's National Convention in Port Huron, Michigan, Hayden presented a draft of a
statement of the values, beliefs, and conclusions of the New Left. This classic, The Port Huron Statement, criticized the hollowness of the
American dream and enunciated many of the fundamental beliefs held by SDS during the
1960s.
Throughout the 1960-1962 period, there existed continuous tension between SDS and LID. The
League paid staff salaries and provided office facilities for SDS, but became increasingly
disenchanted with the leftist direction of its junior organization. The members of both
organizations increasingly realized that their ways were parting.
The school year of 1962-1963 found SDS involved in supporting civil rights activities in
the South, pushing for a halt to nuclear testing, and organizing student chapters. Richard
Flacks directed a Peace Research and Education Project (PREP), organized during the fall of
1962, which served as a clearinghouse and publishing center for research about peace,
disarmament, and foreign policy. PREP remained basically a one-man affair from the fall of
1962 through the fall of 1964, when Flacks resigned as director and Todd Gitlin and Paul
Booth assumed charge. Funded by a $7500 grant by a wealthy Texas liberal, Joe Weingarten,
Gitlin and Booth pursued an aggressive program of campus speaking trips which stimulated the
founding of SDS chapters. PREP also continued its research activities, concentrating on the
conversion of the economy to peace-oriented production, American imperialism, and the
military draft. Actual work on converting the economy to peace-time uses was only effective
in the Boston area, where PREP assumed a role similar to the Economic Research and Action
Project (ERAP) and assimilated the latter's local group.
During the summer of 1963, SDS obtained a grant of $5000 from the United Auto Workers. With
part of this money, they established ERAP. From engaging in research into poverty, ERAP
sought during 1964-1965 to build a radical political movement of the impoverished. People
from neighborhoods would be organized on issues like better schools or garbage removal, and
through their struggle learn how power operates in our society. This program, led by Rennie
Davis, broadened the insights of ERAP workers but failed to either alter the condition of
the poor or to organize them.
During the 1963-1964 academic year, there was considerable debate over the direction of
SDS; to organize the disenfranchised and exploited, or to organize students. This division
could be seen in the diverse programs of SDS which ranged from ERAP's work in the slums to
the Political Education Project's (PEP) distribution of buttons with the slogan “Part
of the way with LBJ.” The establishment of PEP had been mandated by the delegates at
the June 1964 National Convention. Lead by Steve Max and Jim Williams, it sought to push
national electoral politics to the left. Towards this end, PEP distributed anti-Goldwater
literature for the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, which had given it $1300. The
Johnson landslide victory and subsequent escalation in Vietnam proved to be PEP's undoing.
The December 1964 National Council scrapped most of PEP's tentative programs and left it to
fade into oblivion during 1965.
In the academic year of 1964-1965, SDS had twenty-seven chapters in the U.S. and about two
thousand dues-paying members. It published a monthly Discussion
Bulletin for the membership and sent out a weekly worklist to about two hundred
activists and chapter contacts. Having directed its major efforts towards community
organizing, SDS was surprised at the development of two new issues which came to overshadow
the poverty question: the Vietnamese War and the issue of student power as exemplified in
the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Though unprepared, SDS lent support to the latter
struggle but was less willing to become actively involved in the anti-war movement. This was
due to a fear of becoming a “one issue organization” and a belief by its members
that the internal structure of America had to be radically altered in order to prevent
imperialism. At the December 1964 National Council meeting, a proposal to organize an
anti-war demonstration the following spring passed only after heated debate. This National
Council also started an action-education program directed -by PREP against American economic
imperialism in South Africa; this produced a torrent of literature and sparked the March
1965 Chase Manhattan Bank protest, at which SDS members were arrested for the first
time.
The April 17, 1965 March on Washington also proved to be a great success and made SDS
recognized as one of the primary organizations of the New Left. That spring the National
Office moved from New York to Chicago, symbolizing both the parting of ways between SDS and
LID, and a shift of the organization from being basically East Coast-oriented to one which
included the entire U.S.
The June 1965 National Convention, held at Kewadin, Michigan, proved to be a transition for
SDS. The convention re-affirmed SDS's commitment to the organization of local power bases
and to a multi-issue style of radicalism. It consciously rejected leadership of the anti-war
movement at a time when many expected SDS to sponsor more massive anti-war demonstrations as
well as militant draft resistance, and following the Kewadin convention, SDS had neither the
organizational structure nor the commitment to lead the swelling anti-war movement.
Leadership passed from Eastern radicals with longer experience in leftist movements to
Midwesterners with neither radical nor organizational experience. These new leaders
concerned themselves more with action than with theory and had only a vague idea of the
complex divisions in the American Left. In the National Office this encouraged a general
breakdown, which was only partially alleviated by bringing in Clark Kissinger and Paul Booth
to serve as temporary National Secretaries. Throughout this chaotic period, New Left Notes played an important unifying role by printing many
of SDS's position statements, local news, and numerous letters to the editor by leftists of
every stripe.
In spite of or perhaps because of its disorganization, SDS continued to exert an immense
leftward influence on the anti-war and student movements. It started to attract members from
the Maoist-orientated May 2nd Movement, a youth organization of the Progressive Labor Party.
SDS's Radical Education Project (REP) produced a series of documents exposing the complicity
of academia with the military-industrial complex. The April 1965 National Council Meeting
commissioned REP to undertake analytical research similar to that of the defunct PREP as
well as to strengthen internal education and communication. This group enlisted many of the
“old guard” like Al Haber, Paul Booth, and Steve Weissman. In 1966, REP was
incorporated separately; by the following year it had broken with SDS over the issue of
whether it should train organizers or, as REP preferred, continue its research efforts.
SDS's influence could also be gauged by the students' shift frs' shift from protest to
resistance during 1967 and the crescendo of violence connected with student protests.
Although SDS had a relatively mild national anti-war policy and had opposed the October 1967
March on the Pentagon, local SDS chapters and members came to lead militant student
protests. These confrontations, in turn, convinced some SDS members that the accepted
methods of protest were ineffective and that an insurgent, student-based movement had to be
developed. Drawing upon the flourishing youth culture as well as the militancy of black
radicals, SDS leaders like Mark Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn became convinced of the absolute
necessity of active resistance to establishment repression by any means possible. This
attitude became a harbinger of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM I).
During 1968, SDS experienced increasing factionalism caused by Progressive Labor (PL)
members who were Maoist-doctrinaires and stressed an alliance with the working class; and
the RYM I group who advocated a more student-oriented, militant, counter-cultural program.
SDS remained, however, in the center of student protests like the Columbia University strike
of spring 1968 and the violence at the Democratic National Convention that summer in
Chicago. The June 1968 SDS National Convention saw acrimonious shouting matches, ideological
bickering, and bitter personality clashes. PL supporters gained policy victories that
stressed attempts to gain working-class support, but RYM I and other non-committed delegates
continued to dominate the organization's leadership positions.
SDS found itself harrassed from without and fragmented from within during the 1968-1969
school year. These pressures surfaced with a vengeance at the June 1969 National Convention
at which SDS split into approximately three factions: PL, Weathermen, and RYM II. This
latter group, composed of diverse, moderate SDSers, collapsed within a year due to its
inability to develop a coherent, activist program. The Weathermen, who included many of the
national leaders and staff members, sought to initiate an immediate revolution; within six
months, the organization had gone underground and its leaders were wanted in connection with
mob violence and bombing. SDS-PL continues today as an off-shoot of the Progressive Labor
Party; dominated by a doctrinaire ideology, which, for example, condemned Ho Chi Minh for
receiving aid from the USSR, this organization has had little appeal on campus. And so SDS,
after being at the forefront of the New Left during the 1960s, dissolved into factions of
bickering ideologues and violence-oriented cadres.
Much of this information came from a history of SDS prepared by Clark Kissinger, circa
1965; from Kirkpatrick Sale's book, SDS (New York: Random
House, 1973); and from an interview with Patrick M. Quinn, formerly of the State Historical
Society staff, May 16, 1974.
Officers and Membership Statistics
1960-1962: |
(There was no convention in 1961 and no election of new officers.) |
President: |
Al Haber |
Vice President: |
Jonathan Weiss |
Field Secretary: |
Al Haber (1960-2) |
|
Tom Hayden (1961-2) |
Members: |
250 (December 1960) |
|
575 (November 1961) |
|
800 (May 1962) |
Chapters: |
8 (December 1960) |
|
20 (November 1961) |
|
10 (May 1962) |
1962-63: |
President: |
Tom Hayden |
Vice President: |
Paul Booth |
National Secretary: |
Jim Monsonis |
Field Secretary: |
Steve Max |
Members: |
900 (January 1963) (447 pd.) |
|
1100 (June 1963) (600 pd.) |
Chapters: |
9 (January 1963) |
1963-64: |
President: |
Todd Gitlin |
Vice President: |
Paul Booth |
National Secretary: |
Lee Webb/Clark Kissinger |
Field Secretary: |
Steve Max |
Members: |
1500 (October 1963) (610 pd.) |
|
1000 pd. (June 1964) |
Chapters: |
19 (October 1963) |
|
29 (June 1964) |
1964-65: |
President: |
Paul Potter |
Vice President: |
Vernon Grizzard |
National Secretary: |
Clark Kissinger |
Members: |
2500 (December 1964) (1365 pd.) |
|
3000 (June 1965) (2000 pd.) |
Chapters: |
41 (December 1964) |
|
80 (June 1965) |
1965-66: |
President: |
Carl Oglesby |
Vice President: |
Jeff Shero |
National Secretary: |
Jeff Segal/Clark Kissinger/Paul Booth/Jane Adams |
Members: |
10,000 (October 1965) (4000 pd.) |
|
15,000 (June 1966) (6000 pd.) |
Chapters: |
89 (October 1965) |
|
172 (June 1966) |
1966-67: |
President: |
Nick Egleson |
Vice President: |
Carl Davidson |
National Secretary: |
Greg Calvert |
Members: |
25,000 (October 1966) |
|
30,000 (June 1967) |
Chapters: |
265 (October 1966) |
|
247 (June 1967) |
1967-68: |
National Secretary: |
Mike Spiegel |
Education Secretary: |
Bob Pardun |
Inter-organizational Secretary: |
Carl Davidson |
Members: |
35,000 (April 1968) |
Chapters: |
265 (December 1967) |
|
280 (April 1968) |
|
350 (June 1968) |
1968-69: |
National Secretary: |
Mike Klonsky |
Education Secretary: |
Fred Gordon |
Inter-organizational Secretary: |
Bernardine Dohrn |
Members: |
80,000[?]-100,000 (November 1968) |
|
30,000[?]-100,000 (June 1969) |
Chapters: |
350-400 (November 1968) |
|
300[?] (June 1969) |
1969-70: |
National Secretary: |
Mark Rudd |
Education Secretary: |
Bill Ayers |
Inter-organizational Secretary: |
Jeff Jones |
PL (Boston) |
National Secretary: |
John Pennington |
Education Secretary: |
Alan Spector |
Inter-organizational Secretary: |
Patricia Forman |
The above information is taken from Sale's SDS, pp.
663-664.