David Dellinger

David Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was a renowned pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change, and one of the most influential American radicals in the 20th century. He was most famous for being one of the Chicago Seven, a group of protesters whose disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot. The ensuing court case was turned by Dellinger and his co-defendants into a nationally-publicized platform for putting the Vietnam War on trial. On February 18, 1970, they were found guilty of conspiring to incite riots but the charges were eventually dismissed by an appeals court due to errors by US District Judge Julius Hoffman.

Early Life and Education

David Dellinger was born August 22, 1915 in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a well-to-do family. His father was a lawyer who had graduated from Yale Law School. He was also a prominent member of the Republican Party and a friend of |Republican]]). A Yale University and Oxford University student, he also studied theology at Union Theological Seminary.

Rejecting his comfortable background, he walked out of Yale one day to live with hobos during the Depression. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector and anti-war agitator.

David Dellinger was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on August 22, 1915. His father was a lawyer, a Yale law school graduate, and a Republican. In high school David was an outstanding athlete, long distance runner, and tournament-level golfer. He was also a superb student and already a confirmed pacifist. He graduated from Yale University as a Phi Beta Kappa economics major in 1936 and was awarded a scholarship for an additional year of study at Oxford University in England.

Influenced as a youth by Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day's Depression-era Catholic Worker movement, Dellinger worked behind the lines in the Spanish Civil War, and then in 1940 refused to register for the draft before the country's entry into WWII. As a result, he became one of a handful of radical pacifist prisoners whose Gandhian fasts helped integrate the federal prison in Danbury in 1942. (Colleagues like Phil and Dan Berrigan, Ralph DiGia, and others who would also go on to years of peace activism.) [1]

Activism

During the 1950s and 1960s, Dellinger joined freedom marches in the South and led many hunger strikes in jail. As U.S. involvement in Vietnam grew, Dellinger applied Gandhi's principles of non-violence to his activism within the growing anti-war movement, of which one of the high points was the Chicago Seven trial.

Dellinger had contacts and friendships with such diverse individuals as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abbie Hoffman, A.J. Muste, David McReynolds and numerous Black Panthers, including Fred Hampton, whom he greatly admired. As chairman of the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee he worked with many different anti-war organizations. He was a member of the Socialist Party USA.

In 2001, Dellinger led a group of young activists from Montpelier, Vermont, to Quebec City, to protest the creation of a free trade zone. He died in Montpelier in 2004.

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As editor of Liberation magazine in the '50s and early '60s, Dellinger was, with a handful of other pacifists — A. J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, David McReynolds, et al. — a key strategic bridge between the nonviolent civil rights movement led by Dr. King and early protests of the Vietnam War. [2]

"Our nonviolent action would be more positive if we stressed reaching out with love for our fellow human beings — love not only for the victims, but also for those who defend the existing system, including those who think they benefit from it, even toward the police and other security forces." —David Dellinger [3]

Quote

"Before reading [his autobiography], I knew and greatly admired Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them." — Noam Chomsky, from the dustjacket of From Yale to Jail

Sources and Further Reading

• Dellinger, David, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter, New York, Pantheon Books, 1993, ISBN 0679405917
• Dellinger, David, Revolutionary Nonviolence Essay, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, OCLC 92546
• Gara, Larry; Gara, Lenna Mae, A Few Small Candles: War Resistors of World War II Tell Their Stories, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1999, ISBN 0873386213 - ISBN 09780873386210
• Hunt, Andrew E., David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary, New York, New York University Press, 2006, ISBN 0814736386 [4]
• Dellinger, David, "Vietnam Revisited: Covert Action to Invasion to Reconstruction", Massachusetts, South End Press, 1986, ISBN 0896083209 - ISBN 9780896083202 - ISBN 0896083195 - ISBN 9780896083196

External links

• Carlson, Michael, May 28, 2004,David Dellinger: Pacifist elder statesman of the anti-Vietnam Chicago Eight, Guardian Unlimited, Accessed Feburary 14, 2007
• Jacobs, Ron, May 26,2004, Goodbye, David Dellinger; He Was a Friend of Ours CounterPunch, Accessed Febuary 14, 2007
• Howard Zinn; Father Dan Berrigan; Tom Hayden; Jeremy Scahill; Leonard Weinglass; Ralph Digia; and Dave McReynolds, May 27th, 2004, Revolutionary Non-Violence: Remembering Dave Dellinger, 1915-2004, Democracy Now!, Accessed February 14, 2007
• Encyclopedia of World Biography on David Dellinger, BookRags Inc., Accessed February 20, 2007
• Sullivan, Patricia, May 27, 2004, Lifelong Protester David Dellinger Dies, The Washington Post Company, Accessed February 20, 2007

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