For more than fifty years, Staughton Lynd has been a prominent radical in the United States. He was an engaged supporter of the black liberation movement in the South in the early 1960s, most notably as coordinator of the Freedom Schools during Mississippi Summer in 1964. He was an active opponent of US aggression in Indochina, including as chairperson of the first national demonstration against the war in Vietnam in April 1965.

In recent decades, Lynd has been an attorney representing prisoners, particularly at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, and has written a book, a play, and numerous articles about the 1993 uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Since the late 1960s, Lynd has also been deeply involved in the labor movement as an activist, attorney and prolific writer and author of over a dozen books. Inspired by Marty Glaberman, Stan Weir, and Ed Mann, Lynd has long been a proponent of decentralized, rank and file-driven unionism.