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David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was an American pacifism and an activist for nonviolence social change. Although active beginning in the early 1940s, Dellinger reached peak prominence as one of the Chicago Seven, who were put on trial in 1969.
Dellinger graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics, began a doctorate for a year at New College, Oxford, and studied theology at Union Theological Seminary of Columbia University with the intention of becoming a Congregationalist minister. At Yale he had been a classmate and friend of the economist and political theorist Walt Rostow. Rejecting his comfortable background, he walked out of Yale one day to live with during the Great Depression. While at Oxford University, he visited Nazi Germany and drove an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War. Dellinger, who opposed the war's victorious Nationalist faction, led by Francisco Franco, later recalled, "After Spain, World War II was simple. I wasn't even tempted to pick up a gun to fight for General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase Manhattan Bank, even if Hitler was running the other side."
In the 1950s and the 1960s, Dellinger joined freedom marches in the South and led many hunger strikes in jail. In 1956, he, Dorothy Day, and A. J. Muste founded the magazine Liberation as a forum for the pacifist, non-Marxist left. In 1961 Dellinger joined the newly founded Fair Play for Cuba Committee and by late 1961 he had joined the executive of the organization. Dellinger had contacts and friendships with such diverse individuals as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King Jr., Abbie Hoffman, A.J. Muste, Greg Calvert, James Bevel, David McReynolds, and numerous Black Panthers such as Fred Hampton, whom he greatly admired.
As chair of the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, Dellinger worked with many antiwar organizations and helped bring King and Bevel into leadership positions in the 1960s antiwar movement. In 1966 he traveled to both North Vietnam and South Vietnam to learn first-hand the impact of American bombing. He later recalled that critics ignored his trip to Saigon and focused solely on his visit to Hanoi. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments to protest the Vietnam War,"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest," January 30, 1968 New York Post and later became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of protest against the war."A Call to War Tax Resistance" The Cycle 14 May 1970, p. 7
Judge Julius Hoffman's handling of the trial, along with the FBI's bugging of the defense lawyers, resulted, with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in the convictions being overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals two years later. The appeals court remanded the contempt citations for trial before a judge other than Julius Hoffman. Dellinger was eventually convicted on five contempt counts, but was sentenced to time already served.Carlson, Michael, "Obituary: David Dellinger : Pacifist elder statesman of the anti-Vietnam Chicago Eight", The Guardian (UK), Friday 28 May 2004 United States v. Dellinger, Center for Constitutional Rights.
In the late 1970s, Dellinger spent two years teaching at Goddard College's Adult Degree Program and Vermont College."Life on the Edge: The turbulent public and private lives of David Dellinger & Elizabeth Peterson" Article dated 5/29/2006 from the Rutland Herald/Times Argus. "Entry: David Dellinger", Cf. p. 103 in John J. Duffy, Samuel B. Hand, Ralph H. Orth, The Vermont Encyclopedia, University Press of New England, 2003. In 2001, he was invited back to give the commencement address to the graduating class of Goddard's Residential Undergraduate Program.Watch the video from Goddard College's archives.
Dellinger also was a founder of Seven Days, an American alternative news magazine written from a leftist or anti-establishment perspective. Dellinger obtained the subscription list of Ramparts magazine, which ceased publication in October 1975. Seven Days began preview editions in 1975, published regularly starting in 1977 but ceased publication in 1980.
In 1986, when his Yale class of 1936 held its 50th reunion, Dellinger wrote in the reunion book: "Lest my way of life sounds puritanical or austere, I always emphasize that in the long run one can't satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life, love, and laughter."Colman McCarthy, "A Man Who Didn't Obey" (Obituary of David Dellinger), The Progressive, August 1, 2004.
For his lifelong commitment to pacifist values and for serving as a spokesperson for the peace movement, Dellinger was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award on September 26, 1992.
In 1996, during the first Democratic convention held in Chicago since 1968, Dellinger and his grandson were arrested along with nine others, including Civil Rights Movement historian Randy Kryn, Bradford Lyttle, and Abbie Hoffman's son Andrew, during a sit-in at Chicago's Federal Building. UPI report, August 28, 1996
In 2001, Dellinger led a group of young activists from Montpelier, Vermont, to Quebec City to protest a conference that planned to create a free trade zone.
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