Student Activist Tom Hayden Beaten in McComb, Mississippi
Tom Hayden, a graduate of the University of Michigan and an organizer of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), went to Mississippi to write a report on the civil rights work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, founded April 15, 1960). He was beaten by white segregationists in McComb, Mississippi, on this day.
He wrote about his experience and the work of SNCC in the report Revolution in Mississippi (see below).
SNCC’s activism inspired political action by white students outside of the South, including the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 (see October 1, 1964; December 2, 1964) and subsequent anti-Vietnam War protests.
Hayden went on to co-found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and become a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement. He later served in the California legislature from 1982 to 1992.
Hayden died on October 23, 2016.
Read Hayden’s Report, Revolution in Mississippi (1962):
http://www.crmvet.org/info/62_hayden_mccomb.pdfRead Tom Hayden’s memoirs: Tom Hayden, Reunion: A Memoir (1988)
Read: Tom Hayden, The Long Sixties, From 1960 to Barack Obama (2009)
Learn more: Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here