Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
1960s anti-war activist ‘wanted to change’ world
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Tom Hayden, a 1960s anti-war activist whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago Seven trial, Vietnam War protests and his ex-wife Jane Fonda, has died. He was 76.
He died on Sunday after a long illness, said his wife, Barbara Williams, noting that he suffered a stroke in 2015.
Hayden, once denounced as a traitor by his detractors, won election to the California Assembly and Senate where he served for almost two decades as a progressive force on such issues as the environment and education. He was the only one of the radical Chicago Seven defendants to win such distinction in the mainstream political world.
He remained an enduring voice against war and spent his later years as a prolific writer and lecturer advocating for reform of America’s political institutions.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti praised Hayden. “A political giant and dear friend has passed. Tom Hayden fought harder for what he believed than just about anyone I have known. RIP, Tom,” Garcetti said Sunday night on his Twitter account.
Hayden wrote or edited 19 books, including “Reunion,” a memoir of his path to protest and a rumination on the political upheavals of the ’60s.
“Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968,” he wrote.
Hayden was there at the start. In 1960, while a student at the University of Michigan, he was involved in the formation of Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, then dedicated to desegregating the South.
In 1968, he helped organize anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that turned violent and resulted in the notorious Chicago Seven trial. It began as the Chicago Eight trial, but one defendant, Bobby Seale, was denied the lawyer of his choice, was bound and gagged by the judge and ultimately received a separate trial.
After a circus-like trial, Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were later overturned, and an official report deemed the violence “a police riot.”
Thomas Emmet Hayden was born Dec. 11, 1939, in Royal Oak, Mich., to middle-class parents. At Michigan, he took up political causes including the civil rights movement. He wrote fiery editorials for the campus newspaper and contemplated a career in journalism. But upon graduation, he turned down a newspaper job. As he wrote in his memoir, “I didn’t want to report on the world; I wanted to change it.”
In 1965, Hayden made his first visit to North Vietnam with an unauthorized delegation. In 1967, he returned to Hanoi with another group and was asked by North Vietnamese leaders to bring three prisoners of war back to the U.S.
Committed to the antiwar movement, Hayden participated in sit-ins at Columbia University, then began traveling the country to promote a rally in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1971, Hayden met actress Jane Fonda. After he heard her give an eloquent anti-war speech in 1972, Hayden said they connected and became a couple. Hayden and Fonda were married for 17 years and had a son, Troy.
Hayden plunged into California politics in the late 1970s and was elected to the Assembly in 1982. In 1992, Hayden won election to the state Senate advocating for environmental and educational issues.