Staughton Lynd Gave Voice to a Forgotten History of American Radicalism
Staughton Lynd, who died earlier this month, played a prominent role in the antiwar movement and documented the radicalism of the 20th-century working class. His work should be read by anyone interested in understanding the history of the Left.
Staughton Lynd (C) was splashed with red paint at a peace March in Washington, 1965. (Bettmann / Getty Images)
In April 2010, I traveled from Toronto to Washington, DC, to meet and talk with Staughton Lynd, the eminent historian of American radicalism and labor lawyer, as a young historian looking for direction and purpose in life. Lynd was speaking at a memorial for his comrade and fellow radical Howard Zinn, who passed away earlier that January. Lynd spoke movingly about his late friend and ridiculed attempts to attack the value of Zinn’s historical writings. As the event came to a close we stood up, held hands, and sang “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” the civil rights anthem which helped many get through some of the darkest days of the African American freedom movement.
What stuck with me the most about this event was when Lynd passed around an invitation to fellow historians and scholars to consider organizing teach-ins in their communities against the latest buildup to the war on Afghanistan. The callout stated that we should partner “with anti-war veterans’ organizations in staging these teach-in events.” It added: “The partnering of academic speakers with anti-war veterans, who have first-hand experience based on their deployment in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, will strengthen the presentations and increase understanding of the current U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and the Middle East.” This firsthand experience by soldiers, Lynd and Zinn both firmly believed, would add an important layer to our understanding of war and conflict that is seldom heard or listened to by the public, let alone in the hallowed halls of academia.
We Won’t Go
The idea of allowing war resisters to tell their stories to a broader audience was not an invention of Staughton or Alice Lynd, an activist in the antiwar movement as well as Staughton’s long-term collaborator and wife. In October 1965, Lynd sat alongside David Mitchell at a debate on the draft at Yale University, where he was then an assistant professor of history. Mitchell was the first non-pacifist, noncooperator with the Selective Service System to argue that he would refuse induction on the basis not only of his conscience, but domestic and international law embodied by the US Constitution, the Nuremberg principles of 1950, and the Charter of the United Nations.
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