The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.
The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron, Michigan, for the group's first national convention. Under Walter Reuther's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron.
Thomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, becoming an influential figure in the rise of the New Left. As a leader of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society, he authored the Port Huron Statement, helped lead protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and stood trial in the resulting "Chicago Seven" case.
Mary Elizabeth King is a professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the United Nations affiliated University for Peace, a political scientist, and author of several publications. She is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and received a doctorate in international politics from Aberystwyth University in 1999. She is also a Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute and a distinguished Scholar at the American University Center for Global Peace in Washington D.C.
The National Student Association (NSA) was a confederation of college and university student governments that was in operation from 1947 to 1978.
The Michigan Daily, also known as 'The Daily,' is the independent student newspaper of the University of Michigan published in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Established on September 29, 1890, the newspaper is financially and editorially independent from the university. The Daily is often considered one of the most influential student publications, and is one of the largest student publications in the United States with over 500 student staff members.
The Human Rights Party (HRP) was a left-wing political party that existed in Michigan from 1970 to 1977. The party achieved electoral success in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. It eventually expanded to include several other Michigan cities with large student populations. In 1975, the HRP became the Socialist Human Rights Party (SHRP), and it later merged with the Socialist Party of Michigan.
Carl Preston Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966.
Eric Thomas Chester is an American author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or New Students for a Democratic Society (New SDS) is a United States student activist organization founded in 2006 in response to the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with the aim to rebuild the student movement. It takes its name and inspiration from the original SDS of 1960–1969, then the largest radical student organization in US history. The contemporary SDS is a distinct youth and student-led organization with chapters across the United States.
Tom David Kahn was an American social democrat known for his leadership in several organizations. He was an activist and influential strategist in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a senior adviser and leader in the U.S. labor movement.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
The League for Industrial Democracy (LID) was founded as a successor to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1921. Members decided to change its name to reflect a more inclusive and more organizational perspective.
The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms and the rejection of traditional family values, social order, and gender roles. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.
Robert J. S. Ross is an American sociologist and activist known for his research on the global garment trade. He is a Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and at the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University where he has taught since 1972. He is the former Director of the International Studies Stream and was among the founders of the program in Urban Development and Social Change. He is a former Sociology Department Chair. He served as the elected Faculty Chair of Clark University from 2000 to 2006.
Paul Booth was an activist, anti-war protester, and lifelong labor organizer.
Sandra Cason Hayden was an American radical student activist and civil rights worker in the 1960s. Recognized for her defense of direct action in the struggle against racial segregation, in 1960 she was an early recruit to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). With Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi, Hayden was a strategist and organizer for the 1964 Freedom Summer. In the internal discussion that followed its uncertain outcome, she clashed with the SNCC national executive.
During the 1960s, many students and professors from the University of Michigan gathered together in opposition of the Vietnam War. Together, they held a series of student protests and faculty demonstrations that challenged the U.S. government as well as the university administration. While these protests were part of a national trend, those at the University of Michigan stand out for early influence on other universities as well as their persistent nature.
Martha Prescod Norman Noonan was a civil rights activist who is known for her work within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and co-editing a 2012 book Hands on theFreedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.
