Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden was one of the most important radicals of the 1960s, who as a college student at the University of Michigan helped found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the seminal leftist student activist group. The SDS was the vanguard of the student unrest that characterized the decade of the 1960s. Thomas Emmet Hayden was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, to Genevieve Isabelle (Garity) and John Francis Hayden, a Marine who worked for Chrysler. He was of Irish ancestry. In 1961, the 21-year-old Hayden co-authored the Port Huron Statement that was the equivalent of the Declaration of Independence for the student radicals and peace activists that were the heart of the New Left. Such an important influence was Hayden on the radicals of the '60s, he was indicted along with seven other anti-war activists by the federal government for allegedly engaging in a conspiracy to promote riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Although The Chicago 8 (2011) (later the Chicago