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Retracing the New Left: the SDS Outcasts Adam Mikhail Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 Retracing the New Left: The SDS Outcasts Adam Mikhail Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES RETRACING THE NEW LEFT: THE SDS OUTCASTS By ADAM MIKHAIL A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2013 Adam Mikhail defended this thesis on November 12, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were: Neil Jumonville Professor Directing Thesis James P. Jones, Jr. Committee Member Kristine C. Harper Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii For Lala and Misso, who give and give and give. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my committee for all their help, not only during this thesis process, but throughout my time at Florida State University. I owe special thanks to my major professor, Dr. Neil Jumonville, who first introduced me to the New Left. He challenged me to think big, giving me constant encouragement along the way. I could not have hoped for a more understanding or supportive major professor. His kind words were never taken for granted. For an incredibly thorough editing of my thesis, I express my gratitude to Dr. Kristine Harper, who generously decorated this manuscript with ample amounts of red. This is a much better thesis because of her dedication, and I can’t thank her enough. My friend, the legendary Dr. Jim Jones, made my experience at Florida State memorable. I will miss his profanity-laced lectures, but they will always stay with me. I was lucky enough to take Dr. Jones’s World War II course as my first college history class and even luckier to end my time as a historian with him on my committee. Thank you for everything. I must also thank all the history instructors I’ve had over the years, each of whom contributed to my development. I have not a bad word to say about anyone. In addition, I must also give thanks the FSU History Department for honoring me with the Walbolt MA Fellowship. Lastly, I am nothing without my family’s unwavering love and support. I love you all. iv “The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena, or the significance of phenomena, as the wood-sawyer who wears glasses to defend his eyes from sawdust. The question is not what you look at—but how you look and whether you see.”1 – Henry David Thoreau 1 Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906), 373. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... 1 50 YEARS AFTER PORT HURON ...................................................................................................................... 1 REDEFINING THE NEW LEFT ........................................................................................................................... 4 TRACING THE THREADS ................................................................................................................................. 7 HISTORIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER TWO: BECOMING THE NEW LEFT ...................................................... 15 RING OUT THE OLD .................................................................................................................................... 15 COURTING TOM ........................................................................................................................................ 17 THE PORT HURON STATEMENT .................................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER THREE: THE SPLINTERING OF SDS ................................................... 27 “HIGH ON ANALYSIS, LOW ON ACTION” ........................................................................................................ 27 THE HAYDEN‐HABER DEBATE ....................................................................................................................... 29 THE CONSOLATION PRIZE ............................................................................................................................ 34 CHAPTER FOUR: A FAMILIAR VANGUARD ......................................................... 38 STAYING RELEVANT .................................................................................................................................... 38 “AN INTERRACIAL MOVEMENT OF THE POOR?” .............................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER FIVE: THE POLITICAL EDUCATION PROJECT (PEP) ......................... 43 COUNTERING GOLDWATERISM AND THE “WHITE BACKLASH” ............................................................................ 43 “PART OF THE WAY WITH LBJ” ...................................................................................................................... 47 GONE WITH GOLDWATER ............................................................................................................................. 51 REMEMBERING THE POLITICAL EDUCATION PROJECT ........................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 54 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 59 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ..................................................................................... 64 vi ABSTRACT There comes a time in 1963/4 when many in the New Left/SDS start to perceive that the movement is high on analysis and low on action. They have ample idealism, but it’s never acted upon. Harnessing this desire to act tangibly, SDS splits into two distinctive and opposing factions, the Political Education Project (PEP) and the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). PEP recognizes the threat posed by Barry Goldwater’s nomination as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1964 as the beginning of a shift in American culture and politics that could seriously inhibit “leftward” politics. PEP leaders (Steve Max and Jim Williams) try to mobilize support for the Democratic Party, much to the chagrin of the rest of SDS, who view these acts as adhering to the “old way” of fostering change. Instead, SDS focuses on ERAP, a multi-city organization that aims to bring about an interracial movement of the poor through community organizing. This study argues that historians have too often focused on the community organizing faction of SDS in an effort to continue a narrative that leads the most active part of the organization, the Vietnam War protests in the later 1960s. In doing so, they have incorrectly ignored that the actual tenets of the New Left were carried on by PEP. vii CHATPER ONE INTRODUCTION 50 Years After Port Huron All stories must have an ending. For the New Left, this cliché has traditionally been satisfied by any of several historical episodes, each equally unceremonious. The New Left, the student movement that has come to be defined by its largest organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had begun in the early 1960s, brimming with the lofty optimism of youth. In 1962, members of the budding movement met in Port Huron, Michigan, to transcribe the ideas they hoped would define their decade. The result of this meeting was the creation of the most important political document of the Sixties, the manifesto of the New Left, The Port Huron Statement. The statement, written by SDS field secretary Tom Hayden, attempted both to reveal the origins of the movement and to define how it would develop in the future. It was to be the “agenda for a generation.”2 The Port Huron Statement has been referred to as “the most ambitious, the most specific, and the most eloquent manifesto in the history of the American Left.”3 The document is so detailed that it clarifies precisely what a “new” Left would entail. Therefore, to understand the New 2 Milestone Documents, "Tom Hayden: ‘The Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society’." Accessed August 2013. https://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/tom-hayden- the-port-huron-statement-of-the-students-for-a-democratic-societ/text 3 Michael Kazin, "The Port Huron Statement at Fifty," Dissent 59, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 83. 1 Left, one must understand Port Huron, which begins, “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”4 The Port Huron Statement has provided both a logical and necessary starting point for studies of the New Left. The SDS members present at the conference, together with historians, have rightly recognized that the ideas presented in The Port Huron Statement were something innovative. Upon leaving Port Huron, Michigan, SDS members had become imbued with an impetus for activism. Hayden recalled that his then wife, Casey Cason, who was also a drafter, described
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