A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why it FailedBy the spring of 1969, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had reached its zenith as the largest, most radical movement of white youth in American history—a genuine New Left. Yet less than a year later, SDS splintered into warring factions and ceased to exist. SDS's development and its dissolution grew directly out of the organization's relations with the black freedom movement, the movement against the Vietnam War, and the newly emerging struggle for women's liberation. For a moment, young white people could comprehend their world in new and revolutionary ways. But New Leftists did not respond as a tabula rasa. On the contrary, these young people's consciousnesses, their culture, their identities had arisen out of a history which, for hundreds of years, had privileged white over black, men over women, and America over the rest of the world. Such a history could not help but distort the vision and practice of these activists, good intentions notwithstanding. A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed traces these activists in their relation to other movements and demonstrates that the New Left's dissolution flowed directly from SDS's failure to break with traditional American notions of race, sex, and empire. |
Contents
| 3 | |
The New Left and the Black Movement 19651968 | 16 |
The New Left and the American Empire 19621968 | 52 |
The New Left and Feminism 19651969 | 95 |
The New Left Starts to Disintegrate | 145 |
Reasserting the Centrality of White Radicals | 188 |
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action American analysis antiwar movement argued attack Ayers Bernardine Dohrn Bill Ayers black community black liberation black movement black nationalism black nationalist Black Panther Party Black Power black struggle black women bombing Carmichael Chicago civil rights Cleaver defined demands empire ERAP fight Fred Hampton Freedom Gitlin Guardian Hayden and King Ignatin imperialism insisted James Gang Klonsky leadership Left Notes Left’s Leftists liberation movement Liberation News Service Lydegraf Malcolm male chauvinism male supremacy Mark Rudd militant Moreover Oglesby oppression organize white PL's police politicos politics poor whites position privilege problem protest race racial racism radical feminists radical women revolution revolutionary role Rudd Salzman Webb SDS leaders SDS's SDSers SNCC SNCC’s social change society sought Third World tion understand United vanguard Vietnam Vietnamese Weatherman white activists white communities white radicals white supremacy white women white workers woman women's liberation women's movement York young white youth