`Chicago Seven' activist, part of New Left
Helped mobilize anti-Vietnam War movement
Rennie Davis, one of the leftist activists collectively known as the Chicago Seven who were tried in federal court for their role in instigating the clashes at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, an event that sealed his place in the annals of the counterculture, died Feb. 2 at his home in Berthoud, Colo. He was 80.
He had been diagnosed two weeks ago with lymphoma, said his wife, Kirsten Liegmann.
Along with organizers such as Tom Hayden, Davis was an early leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, an activist organization that became a defining element of the New Left.
The son of a top economist in the Truman administration, he grew up in the Washington suburbs and then on a farm in Virginia. He turned to activism as a student in the late 1950s and early '60s at Ohio's Oberlin College, where he joined the SDS and worked to bring about greater economic equality in poor communities.
Davis's interests expanded to include marshaling opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Tensions over the conflict boiled over after thousands had gathered at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago as Vice-President Hubert Humphrey defeated U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., who had campaigned on an antiwar platform. Demonstrators clashed in violent confrontations with police and the National Guard.
The next year, Davis was among eight defendants — including Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Bobby Seale — indicted on charges stemming from a conspiracy to incite a riot. They were known as the Chicago Eight and became the Chicago Seven after charges against Seale, a Black Panther leader, were moved to separate proceedings and eventually dropped.
“In choosing the eight of us, the Government has lumped together all the strands of dissent in the sixties,” Davis told the New York Times. “We respond by saying the movement of the past decade is on trial here.”
The courtroom saga held national attention for months. Five defendants, including Davis, were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. They appealed and in 1972 the convictions were overturned.
The Washington Post