“The right to revolt has sources deep in our history”. William O. Douglas’s 1954 quote is not only applicable to movements prior to 1954 but to the radical groups that were to form in the 1960’s. Organizations such as the Weather Underground had the goal of protest against the establishment. Leaders like Bernardine Dohrn, Kathy Boudin, and Billy Ayers were the sparks that ignited the flame of the radical movement. The Weathermen, in the name of rebellion, would prove to expose the dangerous turn towards extremism that permeated the 1960’s, as one of the most vocal, violent, and influential groups in recent history. “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows”. The line, chosen by member Terry Robbins, from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” created the identity of the Weathermen, a radical group that later changed its’ name to the Weather Underground, so as not to appear sexist. However, the group argued that a Weatherman was necessary; they would help to make people understand the way in which the wind actually blew. While many of the group’s leaders (Billy Ayers, Diana Oughton, Kathy Boudin) hailed from wealthy families, the majority of the members did not come from a high-class background (Gitlin 385).

The creation of the Weather Underground was an direct result of the severe weakening of the Students for a Democratic Society. The goal of the SDS was to “assert their rights” on civil rights, Vietnam, social, and political issues (Raynor 68). For example, SDS and eventual Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin fought for the rights of single welfare mothers in Ohio The SDS initially preferred non-violent tactics, and sought to open the eyes of the nation (particularly the young). While the SDS believed that “the individual should share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life”, the Weather Underground leaned towards violence and more radical strategies (Gitlin 391).

The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago proved to be a violent week. The SDS, including members of the soon to be formed Weather Underground, staged massive sit-ins and protests throughout the Convention, which included brutality, on the part of the protesters as well as Chicago Police Department (as a result of orders given by Mayor Richard Daley). Protesters were upset over the fact that Hubert Humphrey had defeated “peace candidate” Eugene Mc Carthy. Statements made by protesters included a stink bomb detonated in the Palmer House Hotel (where many delegates were staying) by Kathy Boudin. The upheaval at the convention made the national news, and gave more attention to the tension that had surfaced and turned violent.

While the Weather Underground seemed like a wholly violent organization, there was a motive for their rage: the group wanted an end to the violence and killing in Vietnam. The true beliefs of particular SDS and Weather Underground members was best expressed in Destructive Generation: When they went to the Pentagon demonstration in 1967, he (Billy Ayers) ridiculed the national guardsmen, but she (Diana Oughton) approached them directly: “My name is Diana. I’m from Ann Arbor, and I know you can’t talk to me. I’m not asking that you say anything. Just listen. I want to tell you why I’m here”….And then she went on to discuss Vietnam in a way that left the soldier she was talking to with tears in his eyes. During the Chicago convention…Diana and Bryn Mawr classmate Kathy Boudin had put on fancy gowns and wandered around, scrawling “Stop Murdering Vietnamese” in lipstick on ladies’ room mirrors (Collier and Horowitz 78). One belief of the Weather Underground was irrefutable: they considered themselves Communists. When Bernardine Dohrn was being interviewed by SDS members during her campaign for inter-organizational secretary, she was asked if she considered herself a Socialist. Dohrn responded: “I consider myself a revolutionary Communist”. Her comment not only won the election for her, but also defined the basic Communist identity of the soon to be formed Weather Underground (Collier and Horowitz 74). The first national action of the Weather Underground occurred on October 8, 1969 in Chicago, in a four day protest against the Vietnam War known as the “Days of Rage”. Hundreds of members used clubs and chains to vandalize shops and cars in Chicago’s business district. After the melee, six members had been shot, and sixty-eight arrested. To the dismay of members, no popular support ensued (Gitlin 393). The public existence of the Weather Underground was actually quite short. In December of 1969, the national membership met for the last time in Flint, Michigan. Hung around the room were pictures of Communist dictators whom members sought to emulate; the dictators were Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevera, and Fidel Castro. It was then that the group formulated their terrorist strategies; they had deserted the possibility of a popular movement (Raynor 70).

March,1970 marked the time when the Weather Underground literally went underground, and increased their violent tactics. In the basement of a member’s Greenwich Village townhouse in New York City, members had created a bomb factory. A member accidentally connected two wires, resulting in the explosion of sixty sticks of dynamite, killing Weathermen Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins. However, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson managed to escape, and prepared to live the next ten years in the underground (Gitlin 400). Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn was one of the most prolific leaders of the SDS and the Weather Underground. The combination of her intelligence as a lawyer and her appeal to male SDS members made her incredibly successful, resulting in her 1968 election to SDS office (Collier and Horowitz 74). Dohrn played a large part in the SDS movement, traveling the country to address students and recruit new members. After going underground, Dohrn married fellow Weatherman Billy Ayers and remained a fugitive for eleven years.

The remaining members of the Weather Underground would continue to live their lives in varied fashions. Dohrn, without a doubt, made the most remarkable turnaround of all members of the Weather Underground; she is currently an activist for children’s rights, working at the Children and Family Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law. While she first used her expertise as an attorney to fuel the violent struggle that the country was undergoing in the 1960’s, she now uses it to the advantage of the children (Chepesiuk 224).

Billy Ayers joined the SDS to voice his strong opinions regarding the Vietnam War. Two years later, he left the SDS and began the Weather Underground along with other disillusioned SDS members. Ayers’s early days of political protest took place at the University of Michigan, where he earned his liberal arts degree. It was there that Ayers, along with 26 others, was arrested for staging a sit-in at the Ann Arbor draft board. Ayers was influenced by SDS leaders such as Tom Hayden and Al Haber (Chepesiuk 92).

In June, 1969 the SDS dissolved and Bernardine Dohrn joined forces with Ayers to start the Weathermen. In Sixties Radicals, Then and Now Ayers recalls the 1970 Greenwich Village fatal explosion as devastating: I lost my best friend and my girlfriend. I was twenty-four years old. Diana [Oughton] was twenty-seven. I was numb for a long time…disoriented…and I had a lot of grief. I felt a sense of responsibility for their deaths. It was our own craziness that led to that. It wasn’t an act of God (Chepesiuk 104). After the tragic explosion, Billy Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn went underground for eleven years, constantly changing identities and addresses. The duo always managed to stay one step ahead of the law.

Bernardine Dohrn had once said that nonviolence was an “excuse for not struggling. To not act, to not do anything…or to not do as much as you can do - whatever it is - is violent, is criminal, is complicity”. Violence continued to be the theme of the Weather Underground. Bomb manufacturing heightened, and in May of 1970, the Weather Underground issued a “declaration of war”: "Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of American justice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown, and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people. The group’s declaration proved to be true, as they soon bombed the headquarters of the New York Police Department and the barber shop at the U.S. Capitol Building. Twenty more bombings occurred between 1970 and 1975" (Raynor 71).

After many violent bombings, members of the Weather Underground virtually disappeared. When the war in Vietnam ended, the Weather Underground dissolved, although they all agreed to remain friends. In 1977, member Jeff Jones created a plan in which certain members would surface from the underground with the hope of increasing membership of other radicals. He was criticized by Bernardine Dohrn, who said that Jones was abandoning their former comrades and old organization. Regardless of the plan’s plausibility, Jones’s ideas never came to fruition (Raynor 72). In 1977, famous SDS member and Weatherman Mark Rudd became the first to surrender to police. He faced a minimal $2,000 in fines and two years probation. In 1980, Cathy Wilkerson, underground since the townhouse bombing in 1970, surrendered and received a three year prison sentence, for possession of dynamite (Raynor 72).

The shocking, unofficial ending of the Weather Underground came in 1981, with the robbery of a Brinks’ Armored Car, a robbery in which Kathy Boudin was a participant. Boudin had joined the “Family”, most of whom were members of the Black Liberation Army, an extremely radical and violent group that was an offshoot of the Black Panthers. The Family had committed various armed robberies throughout the tri-state area (allegedly to fund their plans for the liberation of blacks in America), but the robbery of the Brinks’ truck at the Nanuet Mall branch of the Nanuet National Bank in Nanuet, New York was their biggest heist ever. $1,585,000 was taken from the armored car and put in a van, transferred to a U-Haul, and driven down Route 59 towards Nyack (Castellucci 18). When the group reached a roadblock at the Nyack entrance of the New York State Thruway, violence ensued. Certain Family members (presumably Chui Ferguson and Sam “Solomon Bouines” Brown), with the exception of Boudin, shot and killed two Nyack police officers, and wounded another. Boudin’s failed escape marked the end of her career; an off-duty corrections officer tackled her to the ground, demanding to know who she was. Boudin only responded “I didn’t shoot him; he did” (Castellucci 9).

The consequent arrest and trial gave Boudin a twenty years to life sentence. Also involved in the Nyack shooting were David Gilbert, father of Boudin’s son Chesa, and Judy Clark, a radical familiar to police. Rumors have stated that Bernardine Dohrn may have played a small part in the Brinks’ robbery. At the time of the robbery, Dohrn (who was using an alias at the time) was the manager of the Manhattan children’s boutique Broadway Baby, which gave her access to customer information; with this information, it was possible for Dohrn to assist in creating fake identification for Family members (Castellucci 242). At the time of the robbery, Boudin had been living in New York with a roommate and her son; she worked as an agent for Econo-Car (an employment which facilitated the theft of vehicles for use in armed robberies) and used aliases which included Lynn Adams, Elizabeth Ann Hartwell, and Barbara Edson (Castellucci 86). After the arrest of member Jeff Jones and his wife three days later (in an unrelated incident) the official end of the Weather Underground was marked. In Ron Chepesiuk’s Sixties Radicals, Then and Now Bernardine Dohrn explained her theory on the Weather Underground’s Vietnam protests, and the violence that came with it: R.C.: Did you come to the conclusion that violence was the way to go? B.D: I don’t think I ever came to that conclusion. I never thought violence was a good thing in a strategic sense. What happened was that I found the combination of militancy and the notion of direct action to be a very compelling militant. I thought that people who were armchair radicals said they followed Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh but weren’t ready to act on their beliefs were irrelevant and even destructive. We saw the government escalate the war. 200 Americans and probably a thousand Indochinese…were being killed each week in Vietnam…The context of the late sixties was one of tremendous official government violence, and our attempt to respond to that in an appropriate way was called by everybody “violent”;…ours was a very decentralized and anarchistic movement…the militancy remained symbolic. We called it “propaganda of the deed” (Chepesiuk 235).

Overall, the Weather Underground proved their point; the nation noticed their actions, and took the violence plaguing the country as a result of groups like these very seriously. It is not clear if the Brinks’ robbery of 1981 is the last act of the Weather Underground; leaders such as Kathy Boudin may soon emerge from the confines of jail. Billy Ayers offered the finest explanation of the existence of the Weather Underground. “We had a grand idea that we thought was important, and we were willing to spend a very important part of our lives reaching for it. We didn’t reach our goal, but I think it has made me a better person. The final chapter has yet to be written” (Chepesiuk 92).  

Castellucci, John. The Big Dance. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1986.

Chepesiuk, Ron. Sixties Radicals, Then and Now. Jefferson, North Carolina, 1995.

Collier, Peter and David Horowitz. Destructive Generation. New York: Summit Books, 1989.

Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

Raynor, Thomas P. Terrorism: Past, Present, Future. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982.