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Staughton Craig Lynd (November 22, 1929 – November 17, 2022) was an American political activist, author, and lawyer. His involvement in social justice causes brought him into contact with some of the nation's most influential activists, including Howard Zinn, Tom Hayden, A. J. Muste, and David Dellinger.
Lynd's contribution to the cause of social justice and the peace movement is chronicled in Carl Mirra's biography, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970 (2010).
He went on to earn a doctorate in history at Columbia University and accepted a teaching position at Spelman College, in Georgia, where he worked closely with historian and civil rights activist Howard Zinn. When Zinn was fired from Spelman at the end of the 1962–63 academic year, Lynd protested. During the summer of 1964, Lynd served as director of the SNCC-organized Freedom Schools of Mississippi. After accepting a position at Yale University, Lynd relocated to New England. In 1965 he gave lectures on 'The History of the American Left' at the Free University of New York. In September 1968, an updated version of the article was published in "Les Temps Modernes", the magazine founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
On November 17, 2022, Staughton Lynd died from multiple organ failure at a hospital in Warren, Ohio. It was five days before his 93rd birthday.
In 1967, Lynd signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War, and urging other people to also take this stand.
Lynd relocated his family to Chicago. There, he struggled to make a living from community organizing. In 1968, he accepted a job from Saul Alinsky as supervisor of the second phase of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) organizer training school. Sociologist and Professor of American Studies Clément Petitjean writes of Lynd: While training an organizer in a field placement in Gary, Indiana, Lynd saw an opportunity to continue a campaign he had been working on "targeting the fact that US Steel, which had one of its biggest steel making sites in Indiana, paid almost no taxes... But Alinsky and the organizer Lynd was supervising had different plans. Instead, the trainee 'tried to organize around the existence of a pornographic bookstore in Indiana, just next to Gary.'" In May 1970, Lynd requested a leave of absence from IAF to return to his research in oral history; a year later, he left the training school. In a letter announcing his decision, he wrote: "Saul come out of quite different political and organizing backgrounds, and it is not surprising that sooner or later our paths would diverge."Staughton Lynd to Ed Chambers, April 2, 1971, box 4Zd532, folder "Staughton Lynd, 1968-1971", Briscoe Center for American History
Meanwhile, he and his wife Alice embarked upon an oral history project dealing with the working class. The conclusions of this work, titled Rank and File, inspired Lynd to study law in order to assist workers victimized by companies and left unprotected by bureaucratic labor unions. In 1973, he enrolled at the University of Chicago law school, where he earned a degree in 1976.
His book Lucasville is an investigation into the events surrounding the 1993 prison riot at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, and voices serious concern over the integrity of legal proceedings subsequent to the event. A memoir of his and Alice's life, "Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together," was released in January 2009.
Personal life
Lynd married Alice Niles in 1951. They had three children and remained married until his death.
Vietnam-era activism
At Yale, Lynd became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. His protest activities included speaking engagements, protest marches, and a controversial visit to Hanoi along with Herbert Aptheker and Tom Hayden on a fact-finding trip in 1966, which made him unwelcome to the Yale administration. As the protest movement grew increasingly violent, Lynd began to have misgivings about the direction it was taking, and found himself estranged from the movement. As a self-described "social democracy pacifism" and "Marxist Existentialist Pacifist", he became interested in the possibilities of local grass-roots organizing. Lynd's New York Times obituary described his political influences as "drawing equal inspiration from Marxism, American abolitionism and Quaker pacifism".
Labor activism
In 1968, Lynd published Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism. Although the book was praised by David Donald in Commentary magazine as "a major work in American intellectual history", When a 2nd edition of the book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, Commentary referred to it as an "established classic". it came under severe criticism from then-Marxist professor Eugene Genovese, writing in the New York Review of Books. As a result of the negative review—combined with Lynd's controversial reputation as an anti-war activist who had traveled to North Vietnam with Tom Hayden—it was soon clear that Yale would deny Lynd tenure. After losing his post at Yale, he became unemployable in academia.
Rust Belt activism
From there, the Lynds relocated to Youngstown, Ohio, in the heart of the Rust Belt. Working first for the union-side labor law firm of Green, Schiavoni, Murphy & Haines, and then for Northeast Ohio Legal Services in Youngstown, he proved to be a vital participant in the late 1970s struggle to keep the Youngstown open. He served as lead counsel for six local unions, several dozen individual steelworkers, and the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley which sought to reopen the mills under worker-community ownership. Despite the ultimate failure of those efforts, the Lynds continued organizing in the Youngstown-Warren area. Staughton remained extremely active as an attorney, taking on a broad range of cases, including those concerning "chemically disabled" auto workers and retired steelworkers.
Works by Lynd
See also
Sources
Further reading
(2025). 9781642598902, Haymarket Books. ISBN 9781642598902
External links
Categories: 1929 Births, 2022 Deaths, 20th-century American Historians, 20th-century American Lawyers, 20th-century American Male Writers, 21st-century American Historians, 21st-century American Lawyers, 21st-century American Male Writers, American Christian Socialists, American Quakers, American Anti–vietnam War Activists, American Conscientious Objectors, American Pacifists, American Social Sciences Writers, American Tax Resisters, Columbia Graduate School Of Arts And Sciences Alumni, Harvard College Alumni, Industrial Workers Of The World Members, Labor Historians, Libertarian Socialists, Lynd Family, Ohio Lawyers, Quaker Socialists, Solidarity Unionism, Spelman College Faculty, University Of Chicago Law School Alumni, Writers From New York City, Writers From Philadelphia, Writers From Youngstown, Ohio, Yale University Faculty
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