Tom Hayden

What do Tom Hayden during the civil rights and antiwar movement that differs from other revolutionary leaders of the period of time? What has he done in the sixties that was important and interesting?

Hayden became one of the founders of the student activist group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1961, he married Casey Hayden, a militant civil rights born in Texas who worked for the Committee on Student Nonviolent Coordinating. He was president of SDS from 1962 to 1963 and developed his most famous work, the Declaration of Port Huron. From 1964-1968, he lived in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked with residents of poor city in the Newark Community Union Project. He was also witness to racial riots in the city and wrote the book Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response (1967). Hayden also played a key role in the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Six months after the Convention, he was charged with federal conspiracy and inciting to riot in the "Chicago Eight" with other protesters including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He made several trips as a major peace activist to Cambodia and North Vietnam during America's involvement in the Vietnam War, including a particularly controversial in 1972 to North Vietnam with his future wife The actress Jane Fonda. The following year he married Jane and they had a child they named Troy Garity, born July 7, 1973.

In 1976, Hayden made a challenge against the California primary election of the sitting U.S. Senator John V. Tunney. From behind, Hayden mounted a challenge and finished a surprisingly close other minds in the Democratic primary. It Fonda and then found the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which formed a close alliance with then-Governor Jerry Brown and managed to promote solar energy, environmental protection, and policies of tenants while promoting the rights of candidates in local elections across California, some 100 of them would be elected.

He was married to Jane Fonda.

Intelligent and coldly analytical, Thomas Hayden was widely regarded as the chief ideologist of the movement. In 1962, Hayden wrote the famous Port Huron statement expressing the idealism of the New Left. He was co-founder of the student for a democratic society. In the early sixties, Hayden participated in the work of civil rights in the South and in the black ghettos of Newark. Later, he shifted his focus to efforts to end the Vietnam War, twice making trips to North Vietnam.

After the Chicago Seven trial, Hayden married (and later divorced) activist actress Jane Fonda.

Hayden is now a state senator from California. He attended the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a delegate.