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Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.

This article is about the 1960s organization. For the more recent organization, see Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization).

Predecessor

Student League for Industrial Democracy

New Students for a Democratic Society (unofficial)

1960

Ann Arbor, Michigan

1974

Left-wing student activism

New American Movement
Revolutionary Youth Movement
Weather Underground

Venceremos Brigade

A new national network for left-wing student organizing, also calling itself Students for a Democratic Society, was founded in 2006.

Adelson, Alan. SDS. New York, Charles Scribener's Sons, 1972  0-684-12393-2.

ISBN

Berger, Dan (2006). . Outlaws of America: the Weather Underground and the politics of solidarity. AK Press. ISBN 9781904859413.

"Shaking America's Moral Conscience: The Rise of Students for a Democratic Society"

Davidson, Carl, editor. Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and the Lost Writings of SDS. Pittsburgh: Changemaker, 2011  978-1-257-99947-7

ISBN

Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of the Women's Liberation Movement in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. Alfred Knopf. 1979.

Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London and New York: Verso, 2002  978-1-85984-617-9.

ISBN

Frost, Heather. An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s. New York: New York University press, 2001  0-8147-2697-6.

ISBN

Heath, G. Louis, ed. Vandals in the Bomb Factory: The History and Literature of the Students for a Democratic Society. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976  0-8108-0890-0.

ISBN

Hogan, Wesley C., "" Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-8078-3074-1.

Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America.

Isserman, Maurice. If I Had a Hammer: the death of the old left and the birth of the new left. New York: Basic Books, 1987.  0-465-03197-8.

ISBN

Klatch, Rebecca E. A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999  0-520-21714-4.

ISBN

Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994  978-0-674-19725-1.

ISBN

Pardun, Robert. "Prairie Radical: A Journey Through the Sixties" Shire Press, 2001  0-918828-20-1.

ISBN

Sale, Kirkpatrick, SDS: The Rise and Development of The Students for a Democratic Society. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books. 1973.  0394478894

ISBN

SDS and Weather Underground Documents compiled by Next Left Notes, a journal edited by several former and current SDS members

New Left Archive at NLN

SDS Historical Documents and other links

. Archived from the original on November 4, 2009. Retrieved May 9, 2009. Includes Port Huron Statement, "SDS: The Last Hurrah" (an account of Chicago 1969 written by an undercover federal agent), and the Revolutionary Youth Movement mission statement.

"Shut It Down!"

This collection contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. They reflect the social environment and political activities of the youth movement in Seattle during that period.

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Vietnam Era Ephemera

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Students for a Democratic Society

from the Pacific Northwest Antiwar and Radical History Project

Photos and Documents: SDS News at UW

Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.), Records, 1965-74. May 4 Collection—Box 107. Libraries and Media Services. Department of Special Collections and Archives. Online guide retrieved September 28, 2012.

Kent State University

Students for a Democratic Society Period : 1962–1970. Period : 1962–1970. Total Size : 0.5 m. International Institute of Social History. .

Online guide retrieved April 12, 2005

Media related to Students for a Democratic Society at Wikimedia Commons