Entryway sign that greets researchers at the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Research Center, Home of the Labadie Collection. Photo provided by the author.
Home to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is also the birthplace of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the leading New Left organizations of the 1960s. Established in Ann Arbor as a way to link progressive minded student activists across the country during the early-1960s, SDS grew rapidly during the Vietnam era. At its peak, there were more than 300 chapters, and tens of thousands of members, before the national organization collapsed due to sectarian divisions in 1969. Other college towns like Berkeley, California and Madison, Wisconsin were also central sites of student protests, but Ann Arbor was the New Left’s primary incubator for the movement’s leading activists. It’s also where Tom Hayden (1939-2016), an ambitious editor of the University’s student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, became an organizer. As Hayden’s authorized biographer, Ann Arbor has become a place to conduct research and a destination that has helped explain my subject’s political development.1
Tom Hayden co-founded SDS and was the principal author of the organization’s manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. The document called for a new student based movement that prioritized “participatory democracy,” and sold more than 100,000 copies during the 1960s. Primarily known as one of the “Chicago 8” and his marriage to actress Jane Fonda, he later served in the California state legislature for 18 years. He remained active in progressive causes until his 2016 death. I have visited the University of Michigan’s Special Collections reading room three times over the last year to review Hayden’s records. The University acquired his papers in 2014 and added them to the Library’s Labadie Collection, an archive that collects materials on left-wing social movements. Hayden’s collection consists of more than 200 boxes of correspondence files, notebooks, photographs, a 22,000 page FBI file, and some of his early writings from his days in Ann Arbor. The Labadie’s Curator Julie Herrada and her colleagues at Special Collections have been incredibly helpful during my trips to Ann Arbor.
Box 19 of the Tom Hayden Papers. Photo provided by the author.
One part of Hayden’s life well-represented in the archive’s collection is his tenure as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. While leading the paper, he helped pressure the University’s Dean of Women Deborah Bacon to resign. The paper reported on her racist disciplinary actions, which included punishing white women who dated black men. Personally, his tenure was a time of transition. Hayden increasingly felt torn between his journalistic duties and the growing pull to join the civil rights movement. Inspired by the sit-in movement that had spread nationwide, local student activists recruited him to join what eventually became SDS.
A tile marking Tom Hayden’s time as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Daily at the paper’s office. Photo provided by the author.
The University’s Student Publications building is only a short walk from the Special Collections’ reading room. Aside from obvious technological changes, the offices are still the same as they were when Hayden spent numerous sleepless nights in the building. The University recently added honorary tiles honoring former contributors to the Daily. The paper’s former business manager, Michael Hermanoff, recently paid to add Hayden’s name to the floor alongside some of his colleagues who helped publicize the campus’s burgeoning student movement.
Tom Hayden’s former residence in Ann Arbor, 1962-1964. SDS leaders often met in the basement of the house. Photo provided by the author.
Hayden’s old house is less than a mile south of the Daily’s offices. After traveling south and participating in the 1961 Freedom Rides, he helped organize SDS’s first national meeting, the Port Huron Convention, where he was elected the organization’s first president. Hayden moved back to Ann Arbor in the fall and lived in the two-story house with his first wife, civil rights activist Casey Hayden, and other early SDS leaders. The house acted as SDS’s unofficial headquarters in Ann Arbor. Hayden and other SDS-ers frequently had late-night debates in the house’s basement about the organization’s future, the potential impact of the growing student movement, and its relationship to the ever-evolving civil rights movement of the era.
Much like the accounts I have heard of the Daily, the era’s idealism defined the SDS house and the organization’s culture. His archive and the community that profoundly influenced him have added more depth to my understanding of Hayden. Although his work went beyond university life, his form of progressive politics was always rooted in the student revolts of the period.
The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan. The space in front of the Library is known as the “Diag,” and has been the site of student protests since the 1960s. Photo provided by the author.
- I signed on to this project shortly after a small group of Hayden’s friends recruited me in 2021. The “biography committee” included former SDS leaders and other colleagues. They introduced me to Hayden’s wife Barbara Williams and his Troy Garity, and the three of us signed an agreement to make this an authorized biography after a few conversations about the project. The University of California Press will publish the book in 2026.
