Friday, June 15, 1962: The Port Huron Statement

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. ... 

If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.
     -- the opening and closing words of the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of the Students for a Democratic Society, which met June 11-15 in Port Huron, Michigan.

In 1962, college students who had been active in the civil rights movement and the peace movement created Students for a Democratic Society. SDS represented what was called the New Left. At its organizing meeting in Port Huron, Michigan, SDS adopted a manifesto drafted by Tom Hayden, a graduate student at the University of Michigan. The Port Huron Statement was a wide-ranging critique of American society -- of racial injustice, the dangers of nuclear war, the failure to develop peaceful atomic energy, the Cold War, the maldistribution of wealth, the political apathy of students, and the exhaustion of liberal ideology.

     -- From the 2000 book "The American Reader: Words That Moved a Nation" (edited by Diane Ravitch)

* Original draft and final version (from www.sds-1960s.org): @ 

* PDF (1964 edition): @
* "Port Huron Statement" (University of Michigan): @
* "The New Left" (from www.digitalhistory.uh.edu): @
* "The Port Huron Statement at 50" (New York Times, March 2012): @
* "The Port Huron Statement: Still Radical at 50" (from In These Times magazine): @

* "The Port Huron Statement @ 50" (New York University): @
* "The Port Huron Statement Today" (comic book, Paul Buhle and Gary Dumm, 2012): @

* Tomhayden.com: @

* 2010 video of Hayden speech: @ 

---