The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970

8. Still Carrying the Banner: Life after the Sixties

166 The Admirable Radical Chapter Eight ✴ ✴ ✴ Still Carrying the Banner Life after the Sixties [Staughton Lynd] still speaks for the activists’ visions of the 1960s, still carries the banner in a time of dwindling resources and declining expectations . To those who have worked with him, he leaves the impression of firm convictions and a powerful intellect. —The Sunday Tribune, 13 December 1981 If you’re the type of person who gets involved, you’ll be involved all your life. —Ed Mann, former president of Local 1462, Brier Hills Works The full impact of Lynd and the radicals on the historical profession did not appear until 2007. But Lynd’s appeal to an American radical tradition, while largely ignored during the chronological 1960s, found new life among antiwar GIs in the early 1970s, at a time when Lynd was moving away from the national spotlight. A movement among antiwar GIs had blossomed during those years as many Vietnam veterans turned against the war. At this juncture, it was clear to Lynd that the Left had won the argument over the war. Dedicated people, including GIs, were working admirably to bring the war to an end. Family stresses, coupled with Lynd’s belief that local organizing was preferable to the movement’s shift toward democratic centralism, led to his immersion in working-class labor struggles in the decades following the 1960s. Lynd remained an activist, but outside the spotlight. “I began to sense that my marriage was coming under stress from going out of town, making speeches . . . or whatever it might be,” Lynd lamented, so “I stopped doing these things.”1 166 Still Carrying the Banner 167 As he receded from public view, the antiwar movement among GIs embraced the revolutionary vocabulary that Lynd had promoted in the mid-1960s. In January–February 1971, oppositional GIs held Winter Soldier hearings. The term Winter Soldier is derived from Thomas Paine’s denunciation of summertime soldiers who deserted during the Revolution when the conditions became too harsh. The true patriot, according to these Vietnam veterans, was the one who spoke out against war and war crimes. Richard Moser’s comprehensive study of this movement, The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era, concludes that antiwar veterans’ “primary historical reference point” was the American Revolution. Their “alternative patriotism” recovered an American tradition represented by the “Revolutionary minuteman, rebellious seaman, winter soldier, and the white and black abolitionist soldier and armed fugitive slave of the Civil War.” Social activism was the highest form of patriotism for these veterans, an engagement animated by the sense that the values of the American Revolution were “yet to be achieved.”2 This stance mirrors Lynd’s arguments in Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism explored throughout this text. The central arguments of Intellectual Origins, however, flowed from Lynd’s contempt for top-down or vertical decision making. By the mid-1970s, Lynd had followed the advice of civil rights comrades who insisted that white folks should concentrate on organizing other white folks as he watched the movement shift toward centralized leadership. After settling in Niles, Ohio, in the mid-1970s, Lynd’s experience with decentralized organizing was enriched by his work as a labor lawyer for rankand -file workers. Lynd repeatedly heard worker complaints about both the union and the boss. He figured the best way to help ordinary workers was to become an attorney who defended them against large, centralized powers. Lynd found work at the labor law firm of Green, Schiavoni, Murphy, Haines and Sgambati. The law firm represented labor unions, and Lynd often sided with workers who sometimes leveled complaints against the unions. Lynd also published Labor Law for the Rank and Filer, a short book designed to help ordinary workers understand workplace legalities and to reduce the need to hire costly attorneys. Lynd presented the book to Eugene Green, a boss at the firm, on Independence Day in 1978 and was fired the next morning. “In fairness to Mr. Green,” Lynd said, “he and I both anticipated we might find it difficult to work together . . . His clients are labor unions and I had a particular interest in rank and file workers mistreated by companies and unions.”3 Lynd was then hired by the federally funded Northeast Ohio Legal Services . During these years, 1977–79, steel mills in the Mahoning Valley were 168 The Admirable Radical shut down. Companies such as Lykes...