David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was an American pacifist and an activist for nonviolentsocial change. Although active beginning in the early 1940s, Dellinger reached peak prominence as one of the Chicago Seven, who were put on trial in 1969.
Dellinger graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics, began a doctorate for a year at New College, Oxford, and studied theology at Union Theological SeminaryofColumbia University with the intention of becoming a Congregationalist minister.[4][5] At Yale he had been a classmate and friend of the economist and political theorist Walt Rostow. Rejecting his comfortable background, he walked out of Yale one day to live with hobos during the Depression. While at Oxford University, he visited Nazi Germany and drove an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War. Dellinger, who opposed the war's victorious Nationalist faction, led by Francisco Franco, later recalled, "After Spain, World War II was simple. I wasn't even tempted to pick up a gun to fight for General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase Manhattan Bank, even if Hitler was running the other side."[6]
During World War II, he was an imprisoned conscientious objector and anti-war agitator. In federal prison, he and fellow conscientious objectors, including Ralph DiGia and Bill Sutherland, protested racial segregation in the dining halls, which were ultimately integrated because of the protests.[7] He sat on the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America and the Young People's Socialist League, its youth section, until he left in 1943. In February 1946, Dellinger helped to found the radical pacifist Committee for Nonviolent Revolution.[2] In 1948, he co-founded the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. He was also a long-time member of the War Resisters League, joining the staff in March 1955. In July–November 1951, Dellinger participated in the Paris-to-Moscow bicycle trip for disarmament with Ralph DiGia, Bill Sutherland, and Art Emery and sponsored by the Peacemakers; cyclists got as far as the headquarters of the Soviet Army in Vienna. “We were warned not to go to the Soviet zone. People who went to the army headquarters were sometimes never seen again. But we didn’t think that would happen to us. The worst that would happen was jail, and I already knew I could stand that. I was only worried about what I was putting my family through back in the States.”[8] The Paris-to-Moscow Bicycle Trip for Disarmament was a key inspiration for the San Francisco to Moscow Walk for Peace in 1960–1961.[9]
As US involvement in Vietnam grew, Dellinger applied Mahatma Gandhi's principles of nonviolence to his activism within the growing antiwar movement. One of the high points of this was the Chicago Seven trial over allegations that Dellinger and several others had conspired to cross state lines with the intention of inciting a riot, after antiwar protesters had interrupted the 1968 Democratic National ConventioninChicago. The ensuing court case was turned by Dellinger and his co-defendants into a nationally publicized platform for putting the Vietnam War on trial. On February 18, 1970, they were acquitted of the conspiracy charge, but five defendants, including Dellinger, were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot. All of the defendants, along with their two lawyers, were given sentences for contempt of court; Dellinger was sentenced to 29 months and 16 days on 32 contempt counts.
Judge Julius Hoffman's handling of the trial, along with the FBI's bugging of the defense lawyers, resulted, with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in the convictions being overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals two years later. The appeals court remanded the contempt citations for trial before a judge other than Julius Hoffman. Dellinger was eventually convicted on five contempt counts, but was sentenced to time already served.[15][16]
In the late 1970s, Dellinger spent two years teaching at Goddard College's Adult Degree Program and Vermont College.[18][19] In 2001, he was invited back to give the commencement address to the graduating class of Goddard's Residential Undergraduate Program.[20]
Dellinger also was a founder of Seven Days, an American alternativenews magazine written from a leftist or anti-establishment perspective. Dellinger obtained the subscription list of Ramparts magazine, which ceased publication in October 1975.[21]Seven Days began preview editions in 1975, published regularly starting in 1977 but ceased publication in 1980.
In 1986, when his Yale class of 1936 held its 50th reunion, Dellinger wrote in the reunion book: "Lest my way of life sounds puritanical or austere, I always emphasize that in the long run one can't satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life, love, and laughter."[22]
For his lifelong commitment to pacifist values and for serving as a spokesperson for the peace movement, Dellinger was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award on September 26, 1992.
Dellinger died in Montpelier, Vermont, in 2004 after an extensive stay at Heaton Woods Nursing Home.[24] He suffered from Alzheimer's disease for years before his death.
Dellinger, David T., Revolutionary Nonviolence: Essays by Dave Dellinger, Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill, 1970
Dellinger, David T., More Power Than We Know: The People’s Movement Toward Democracy, Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press, 1975. ISBN0-385-00162-2
Dellinger, David T., Vietnam Revisited: From Covert Action to Invasion to Reconstruction, Boston, MA : South End Press, 1986. ISBN0-89608-320-9
Dellinger, David T., From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter, New York : Pantheon Books, 1993. ISBN0-679-40591-7. (Dellinger's autobiography)
^"Life on the Edge: The turbulent public and private lives of David Dellinger & Elizabeth Peterson" Article dated 5/29/2006 from the Rutland Herald/Times Argus.
Edited by Mark L. Levine, George C. McNamee and Daniel Greenberg / Foreword by Aaron Sorkin. The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Official Transcript. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN978-1-9821-5509-4. OCLC1162494002
Edited with an introduction by Jon Wiener. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Afterword by Tom Hayden and drawings by Jules Feiffer. New York: The New Press, 2006. ISBN978-1-56584-833-7
Edited by Judy Clavir and John Spitzer. The Conspiracy Trial: The extended edited transcript of the trial of the Chicago Eight. Complete with motions, rulings, contempt citations, sentences and photographs. Introduction by William Kunstler and foreword by Leonard Weinglass. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970. ISBN0224005790. OCLC16214206
Schultz, John. The Conspiracy Trial of the Chicago Seven. Foreword by Carl Oglesby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. ISBN9780226760742. (Originally published in 1972 as Motion Will Be Denied.)
Conspiracy on appeal; appellate brief on behalf of the Chicago Eight. Of Counsel: Arthur Kinoy, Helene E. Schwartz [and] Doris Peterson. New York, Center for Constitutional Rights; distributed by Agathon Publication Services, 1971.