SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 24 (UPI) — Tom Hayden, a U.S. political activist prominent in the 1960s and later a California state legislator, died in Santa Monica, Calif., his wife said. He was 76.
Hayden died Sunday. The cause of his death was not announced, though he previously had heart-related illnesses and had a stroke in 2015. He fell ill while attending the National Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in July.
Hayden was among the most visible of left-wing radicals in the antiwar protests of the 1960s, a founder of the Students for a Democratic Society; a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial, in which he was accused of promoting violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; and a peace activist. With actress Jane Fonda, whom he married in 1973, he visited Hanoi, North Vietnam, and escorted U.S. prisoners of war home.
He was jailed Georgia as a civil rights worker, where he drafted the Port Huron Statement, a call to action in which he envisioned a peaceful crusade of college students against what it called a repressive government and racism.
As the antiwar movement dwindled with the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, Hayden shifted his focus and in 1982 was elected to the California State Assembly. He attempted runs for higher state office, including the governorship, but could not overcome his radical past.
In 2014 his personal papers, 120 boxes of material which includes 22,000 pages of FBI files from its 16-year surveillance of him, were donated to the University of Michigan.
Hayden was married three times. Survivors include his wife, actress Barbara Williams, their son, a stepdaughter from previous marriage of Fonda’s, and a son with Fonda.
