Marion Delgado

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Marion Delgado was a five-year-old American boy whose image and story made the inside pages of Life magazine on June 2, 1947. [1] The caption below the photograph read: "With a defiant smile, 5-year-old Marion Delgado shows how he placed a 25-pound concrete slab on the tracks and wrecked a passenger train."

<i>Life</i> (magazine) American magazine

Life was an American magazine published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography.

The event was reported as an accident. On May 20, 1947, the curious five-year-old tried to crack the slab by bouncing it on the rails. When that did not work, he decided to let the Feather River Express passenger train do the heavy work of cracking the concrete chunk and he laid it across a rail near his Decoto, California home. "At 11:10 a.m. the Feather River Express boomed into Decoto at 50 mph. There was a crash. The engine jumped the rails, tore up 300 feet of track, hit a switch and turned over. The engineer and four other people were injured." [1] When asked by the police, according to the Life article: "Marion shrugged, 'I couldn't break that big rock by myself', he said, 'so I decided to let the train do it.'"

Feather River Route rail line built and operated by Western Pacific Railroad; runs between Oakland, California and Salt Lake City, Utah, in the USA

The Feather River Route is a rail line that was built and operated by the Western Pacific Railroad. It was constructed between 1906 and 1909, and connects the cities of Oakland, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The line was built to compete with the Central Pacific Railroad, which at the time held a nearly complete monopoly on Northern California rail service. The route derives its name from its crossing of the Sierra Nevada, where it follows both the North and Middle Forks of the Feather River. The route is famous for its impressive engineering qualities and its considerable scenic value. All of the route is now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad; however, the Union Pacific has transferred significant portions of the route to other lines. The portion still called the Feather River Route by the Union Pacific runs from the California Central Valley to Winnemucca, Nevada.

Decoto is a former settlement in Alameda County, California, now annexed to Union City. It was located 5 miles (8 km) north-northwest of downtown Newark.

New Left Notes, vol. 4, Number 29 August 29, 1969. Featuring Marion Delgado from a 1947 Life magazine article Cover New Left Notes vol 4, Number 29 August 29 1969.jpg
New Left Notes , vol. 4, Number 29 August 29, 1969. Featuring Marion Delgado from a 1947 Life magazine article

Just over two decades after the photo and caption ran in Life, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) (then under the control of the Weathermen) published the Delgado photograph and caption on the cover of their newspaper, New Left Notes without attribution and without the accompanying article. [2]

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States that was one of the main representations of the New Left. Founded in 1960, the organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s, with over 300 chapters recorded nationwide by its last convention in 1969.

Delgado's name was later elevated to that of "editor" after the other major groups in SDS condemned the cover. [3]

Various Weathermen continued to invoke the name "Marion Delgado" for decades afterward. In Billy Ayers' book Fugitive Days , Delgado was mentioned as an Italian boy who derailed a train in Italy, with no injuries, and that Terry Robbins had gotten the photo "hot off the AP wire" in 1969. [4] As of April 2015, the AP News Archive has no record of a Marion Delgado story in 1969.

Bill Ayers American professor and activist

William Charles Ayers is a former leader of the Weather Underground and American elementary education theorist. During the 1960s, Ayers participated in the counterculture movement that opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s radical activism and his current work in education reform, curriculum and instruction. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described Communist revolutionary group with the intent to overthrow imperialism, that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s in response to US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Fugitive Days is a memoir by Bill Ayers. Ayers chronicles his childhood, his radicalization, his days as a leader of the Weather Underground, and his days on the run from the US government. The book was originally published by Beacon Press in 2001 and was republished by Penguin Group in 2003, featuring a new afterword by the author.

Terry Robbins was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.

Jeff Jones is quoted as calling out the name "Marion Delgado" to signal an attack by the Weathermen on the Drake Hotel during the Days of Rage protests in 1969. [5] [6] Additionally, Bernardine Dohrn used the name during a Weatherwomen rally. [7]

Jeff Jones (activist) American activist

Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.

Drake Hotel (Chicago) United States historic place

The Drake, a Hilton Hotel, 140 East Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois, is a luxury, full-service hotel, located downtown on the lake side of Michigan Avenue two blocks north of the John Hancock Center and a block south of Oak Street Beach at the top of the Magnificent Mile. Overlooking Lake Michigan, it was founded in 1920, designed in the Italian Renaissance style by the firm of Marshall and Fox, and soon became one of Chicago's landmark hotels, a longtime rival of the Palmer House. It has 535 bedrooms, a six-room Presidential Suite, several restaurants, two large ballrooms, the "Palm Court", and Club International. It is known for the contribution that its silhouette and sign on the lake façade make to the Gold Coast skyline.

Days of Rage series of demonstrations

The Days of Rage demonstrations were a series of direct actions taken over a course of three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the Weatherman faction of the counterculture-era group Students for a Democratic Society.

The novel The Company You Keep mentions "Marion Delgado Brigades" (MDB) in several passages. [8]

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References

  1. 1 2 BOY WRECKS TRAIN. Google Books. LIFE. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
  2. ↑ Varon, Jeremy (Mar 31, 2004). Bring the War Home. University of California Press. p. 80. ISBN   0520930959 . Retrieved 15 April 2015.
  3. ↑ Hobson, Christopher (December 1969). "Weathermen in Chicago: Wargasm Rained Out" (PDF) (14). International Socialist. International Socialist. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
  4. ↑ Ayers, William (2009). Fugitive Days (reprint ed.). Beacon Press. p. 149. ISBN   0807032778 . Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  5. ↑ Varon, Jeremy (31 March 2004). Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. University of California Press. p. 80. ISBN   9780520930957 . Retrieved 21 April 2015.
  6. ↑ Burrough, Bryan (11 April 2015). ""Everyone who considers himself a revolutionary should be armed": Bill Ayers, the Weathermen and the Days of Rage". Salon. Retrieved 21 April 2015.
  7. ↑ Schultz, John; Oglesby, Carl (15 April 2009). The Chicago Conspiracy Trial: Revised Edition. University of Chicago Press. p. 94. ISBN   9780226741147 . Retrieved 21 April 2015.
  8. ↑ Gordon, Neil (2004). The Company You Keep. Penguin. ISBN   9781101651360 . Retrieved 26 April 2015.
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