Quite possibly the most politically aware person to emerge from the 1960s social revolutionary movement, he could call on a most diverse slate of friends – ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Abbie Hoffman and Fred Hampton.
The most renowned pacifist that you probably never heard of, he was a mentor to many of the activists from that era and whose names became splashed across front pages from coast to coast, yet his name often brings quizzical brow furrows. Those who knew him well and worked with him described him with words like "courageous,” “warm,” and “committed." He had a reputation of being a happy man. His friends called him, among other things, the "cheery elf." They would say that he was a genuinely friendly person possessed with boundless energy.
Yet when it came to his pacifist stance, he was intractable. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., he preached nonviolence – and he insisted upon it. His goal was social change, change in the policies of his nation – the United States. Because of that, the Encyclopedia Britannica calls him, “one of the most influential American radicals in the twentieth century.”
David Dellinger was born on this date in 1915. Those who have heard the name are probably remembering that he was one of the Chicago Seven - that group of protesters who were accused of promoting the violence that disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. For David, that accusation could not be further from the truth. Not only was he a pacifist, as was shown in film footage at the trial, the Chicago Police were the ones who turned to violence. Other than to protect someone, David would have no part in it.
David was well known within the activist circle for his organizational skills. Unlike the others, he could bring people together, find the common ground, then keep everyone focused on the goal. In his biography, writer Andrew E. Hunt says of David Dellinger, “His activism was a model for a whole generation.”
David tells us his life story in his autobiographical writings. He was born into an upper class family in Wakefield, Massachusetts. His father was a lawyer who had graduated from Yale Law School, so it was natural that David would follow. Also like his father, he joined the Republican Party, soon becoming a prominent member.
While in high school he was an outstanding athlete, excelling in long distance running. He joined the golf team where he became tournament-level. Davis seemed to be good at everything. He was a straight-A student and in 1935 he graduated Yale as a Phi Beta Kappa economics major. He won a scholarship for a year of study at Oxford in England, then returned to Yale for graduate school. Following that, David entered the Union Theological Seminary in New York, with the goal of becoming a congregationalist minister – but life intervened.
The writings of Leo Tolstoy and the actions of Mahatma Gandhi were great influences on him, as was Dorothy Day's Depression-era Catholic Worker movement.
He worked behind the lines in the Spanish Civil War but would not pick up a weapon. Returning home in 1940, he refused to register for the draft, becoming one of the first conscientious objectors of World War II. With his current enrollment in Seminary school, had he requested it, he could have received a deferment. He took this stand to make a point. He refused to register or to serve, and for that stance he was imprisoned. It was not a waste of time. David never allowed any time to pass that could better be spent in activism. While there he joined with fellow pacifists to engage in Gandhi-like hunger strikes. Their goal was to desegregate the Danbury, Connecticut federal prison.
In his “Revolutionary Nonviolence Essay,” David writes that upon his 1942 release from prison, he joined with peace activists like the radical Catholic priests, brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan. It would be the beginning of many years of peace activism.
In “A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their Stories,” Authors Larry and Lenna Mae Gara’ write, “Dellinger joined with Abraham Muste and Dorothy Day to establish the Direct Action magazine in 1945. Dellinger once again upset the political establishment when he criticized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In 1956, according to Andrew E Hunt in his book, “David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary,” writes that “Dellinger, A. J. Muste, and Sidney Lens became the editors of ‘Liberation,’ a radical pacifist monthly magazine. With a handful of other pacifists, such as Bayard Rustin and David McReynolds, they became a key bridge between the nonviolent civil rights movement led by Dr. King and early protests of the Vietnam War.”
“By the mid-60s,” Hunt continues, “Dellinger had become known as one of the main spokespersons for the radical American left, as young Americans began to protest the nation's treatment of African-Americans and the U.S. military incursion into Southeast Asia.”
Although David would become most identified with the 1960s era peace movements, he had been to prison long before then. In the 1930s he organized unionization drives, which were at that time illegal. In the 1950s he became deeply involved with the civil rights movement, marching with Dr. King and John Lewis. In his book, “Vietnam Revisited: Covert Action to Invasion to Reconstruction,” David wrote that he lost track of the times and places he was jailed. "I went from Yale to jail," he said, "and got a good education in both places." War, said David, was "evil and useless." His alternative to war was brotherhood and the abolishment of capitalism.
Then came Vietnam, and David immediately took to the streets. David became the chairman of the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, where he worked with a diverse group of anti-war organizations.
“Dellinger was key to the resistance of the Vietnam War from the beginning,” writes Hunt, “as both an organizer and a protester. He was able, as virtually no one else in the peace movement was, to bridge the gaps between all the various groups protesting the war.”
In April 1963, David participated in a "peace walk" in New York City. Although planned as a peaceful march, pro-war “anti-communist” counter protestors had different ideas. As Hunt writes, “those who favored peace clashed with other marchers over the Vietnam War. Dellinger's role moved him to the forefront of anti-Vietnam politics. He worked in 1964, with Muste and Daniel and Philip Berrigan to write a ‘Declaration of Conscience’ to encourage resistance to the military draft.”
“A year later,” Hunt continues, “in August 1965, with Yale professor Staughton Lynd and Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee organizer Bob Parris, Dellinger was arrested in front of the U.S. Capitol leading a march for peace and was jailed for 45 days. Two months later, Dellinger became one of the organizers of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. It was this organization that staged the huge anti-war marches in Washington D.C. in 1970.”
In October of 1967, Dellinger helped organize the famous march on the Pentagon, which would later be memorialized by author Norman Mailer in his prize-winning book, “Armies of the Night.” This was not his only Pentagon protest.
In her 2004 Washington Post obituary following David’s death, Patricia Sullivan says “He made two trips to China and North Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. In 1969, North Vietnam decided to release a few U.S. prisoners of war, and its leaders requested Dellinger, among others, to travel to Hanoi to escort them back to the U.S. He and three others, including Rennie Davis, his co-defendant in the aftermath of the Chicago riots, flew to Hanoi in August and escorted the Americans back to freedom.”
The Chicago Riots Sullivan mentions occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was the birth of the infamous Chicago Seven (originally the Chicago Eight) trial. David’s inclusion resulted in him being charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot. The trial, rather than meeting with the goals of Chicago’s Mayor, Richard Dailey, instead “became a nationally-publicized platform for putting the Vietnam War on trial,” according to the Britannica.
The convention was the scene of massive demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War. Thousands showed up with signs and banners, tie-dyed shirts, music, dancing, and poetry. At first it was a carnival atmosphere, peaceful. but the police were edgy. When the crowd did not disperse following the announcement of a nighttime curfew, the cops responded with tear gas, then waded into the crowd swinging batons. In the aftermath, a grand jury indicted eight police officers and eight demonstrators. David was one of those.
The original eight defendants were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Bobby Seale, and David. David was the oldest of the defendants. The trial began almost a year later, on September 24, 1969, and lasted for months. Throngs of anti-war protestors carrying signs and chanting appeared daily in protest of the politically motivated trial. The National Guard was summoned to protect the courthouse, but there was no violence.
Both the defense and the prosecution called an odd assortment of people to testify, including folk singers Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, and Arlo Guthrie, Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, and Reverend Jesse Jackson. All of the defendants were convicted in what was roundly criticized as a rigged trial with a biased judge. The convictions were reversed by the Seventh Circuit the Court of Appeals for “errors” made by the judge, such as his refusal to permit defense attorneys to question prospective jurors regarding cultural bias or to allow the defense to raise objections to improper questioning by the prosecution. The Justice Department refused to re-try the case.
During the trial, Judge Hoffman cited all the defendants and both defense attorneys for contempt and sentenced them to jail. These too were overturned. They were re-tried before a different judge, who originally found David, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis guilty of inciting a riot, but those convictions were again overturned on appeal. Dailey had lost, and he was humiliated.
David continued protesting for human rights. The War Resisters League, in a piece penned by Matt Meyer and Judith Mahoney Pasternak, says that “Dellinger maintained a long-standing commitment to work with the imprisoned population, especially with the more than 100 U.S. political prisoners. A supporter of the American Indian Movement, and of the freedom campaigns for imprisoned AIM leader Leonard Peltier, Dellinger performed a number of lengthy fasts for Native American rights and for Peltier’s release. Peltier, incarcerated since the 1970s, said of Dellinger, "I don’t think that there will ever be another person like him" and upon learning of his death in 2004, he called it a "great loss to the movement as a whole and to political prisoners in particular."
In the 1980s, David moved to Peacham, Vermont, to teach at Vermont College and to write his memoirs which would later become an autobiography. In that book he referred to himself as a "failed poet, a flawed feminist, and a convinced pantheist."
In its “Biography on David Dellinger,” the Encyclopedia of World describes how in 1996, “Dellinger and other activists who demonstrated at the 1968 Democratic National Convention had an opportunity to publicly reflect on the event. The 1996, Democratic National Convention was again held in Chicago. Approximately 500 demonstrators representing a variety of causes appeared, Dellinger among them. He remarked to a reporter, ‘The numbers of people who came and the energy they had made it very successful. We made it clear there would be no violence.’”
David remained an activist and a frequent public speaker for the remainder of his healthy life. In time he managed to finish his memoirs, which he titled, “From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter.” It was published in 1993.
Vietnam was a particular interest of his, yet he did not limit himself to a sole cause. In “From Yale to Jail,” David wrote, “Love for every human being is necessary for our individual growth and fulfillment. Those who practice this love benefit spiritually as they help others. While there are still badly needed changes in our anti-democratic society, I see positive signs that acting with love for other people and their needs does succeed.”
Love for one another was David’s mantra.
David remained politically engaged until just a few years before his death. The "last real trip he made," according to his daughter, “was three years before, in 2001, when he led a group of young activists from Montpelier, Vermont, to Quebec City, to protest the creation of a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere.
"He felt this is one of the most important times to be active," his daughter continued. "He was working on a wide range of things: Prisoners' rights, supporting a living wage, demonstrating and writing about the foreign policy of this government."
In a review of his book, GoodReads writes, “David Dellinger has led a singular life, inspiring more than one generation of Americans. The son of a well-to-do Boston lawyer, Dellinger left Yale during the Depression to ride the freight trains, sleep in hobo camps, and stand in bread lines. A community activist, Vietnam protestor, and member of the Chicago Seven, he has been one the front lines of the fight for the weak against the strong.”
David Dellinger died at age 88, on May 25, 2004, at the Montpelier, Vt., retirement home where he lived. The cause of death was recorded as pneumonia with complications of Alzheimer's disease. He leaves four surviving children, all of whom, in some fashion or another, carry on David’s story.
