Living Inside Our Hope

by Staughton Lynd

The photograph of three men spattered with red paint, their arms linked, marching to protest the Vietnam War, is an icon of the 1960s movement for social justice. David Dellinger is on one side, Robert Moses on the other. In the middle is Staughton Lynd, chairperson of the first march on Washington against the war, and former director of the Mississippi Freedom Schools. Thirty years later, Staughton Lynd here reaffirms ideas central to the New Left of the nonviolence, participatory democracy, an experiential approach to education, and anti-capitalism. In essays written between 1970 and 1995, he passionately defends the intellectual contribution of a movement often dismissed as mindlessly activist. In addition, he advocates direct, sustained involvement in meeting the needs of the working class and the poor. Each section of the book identifies major influences on Lynd's life as teacher, historian, lawyer, and organizer. In the section entitled "Accompaniment," Lynd suggests the relevance to the United States of the concepts of liberation theology which have revolutionized Central America. In "Socialism with a Human Face," he expresses continued allegiance to the socialist ideals exemplified by Simone Weil and E. P. Thompson. The final section, "Solidarity Unionism," deals with the self-activity of rank-and-file workers. Living Inside Our Hope will reach out to everyone who remembers the ideals of the sixties with nostalgia and to those, too young to remember, who are seeking a foundation on which to build their own social activism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

312 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

The son of renowned sociologists Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Lynd, Staughton Lynd grew up in New York City. He earned a BA from Harvard, an MA and PhD in history from Columbia. He taught at Spelman College in Georgia (where he was acquainted with Howard Zinn) and Yale University. In 1964, Lynd served as director of Freedom Schools in the Mississippi Summer Project. An opponent of the Vietnam War, Lynd chaired the first march against the war in Washington DC in 1965 and, along with Tom Hayden and Herbert Aptheker, went on a controversial trip to Hanoi in December 1965 that cost him his position at Yale.

In the late 1960s Lynd moved to Chicago, where he was involved in community organizing. An oral history project of the working class undertaken with his wife inspired Lynd to earn a JD from the University of Chicago in 1976. After graduating the Lynds moved to Ohio, where Staughton worked as an attorney and activist.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a chance to process his papers while working at the Kent State archives in late 1990s. Ended up meeting him at a talk he gave there in 2000. Fascinating, quiet but forthright man. Quaker, radical, intellectual, advocate for working class, part of 1964 summer down in Mississippi, almost kicked out of the country for trying to end the Vietnam War on his own in Hanoi, and long time union lawyer.

The book is a collection of his writings so it jumps all over and at times gets into the minutiae of radicalism. They don't make people this genuine and good-hearted anymore.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s comforting and distressing to read thoughts from the early 1900s that still ring true to battles being fought in 2023.