"A Traitor to the Movement"?: A Former SDS and Women's Liberation Activist Testifies before Congress

Abstract: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded in 1962 to change the world by fostering participatory democracy and personal authenticity. Heavily influenced by civil rights organizations, SDS initially operated in inner cities and college campuses to combat racism and discrimination. By the mid-1960s, many activists focused on antiwar activities as American troop involvement in Vietnam escalated. Frustrated with male domination in SDS, leftist women formed feminist splinter groups that eventually aligned with reform organizations to create a new women's liberation movement. In the following testimony before a 1970 Congressional committee investigating activist "subversion," Marjorie King, a former chairman of WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell--a guerilla theater offshoot of SDS) described her experiences with radical groups in the Chicago area. This hearing was held a few weeks after an accidental explosion killed three young members of the revolutionary group the Weathermen, an offshoot of SDS, in a Greenwich Village townhouse where the group was manufacturing bombs. As violence coupled with police repression and infiltration signaled the end of a once nonviolent New Left, a new women's movement, also inspired by the civil rights movement, gained momentum.

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