The violent protests of the 1960s and 1970s marked a pivotal era in America’s political landscape.
The Capitol attacks that followed left an indelible mark on the nation, revealing a disturbing pattern of radical activism that still resonates today.
This story dives deep into the tumultuous days of the Weather Underground and the lasting consequences of their violent resistance.
The Political Backdrop
The United States involvement in war in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, rocked the domestic political climate of America in the 1960s and into the 1970s.
Students on hundreds of college campuses across the nation organized and waged political warfare against school administrations on war-related issues. These included campus activities such as opposition to the Army’s ROTC (officer training program), military and CIA recruitment, military research, and receipt of endowment funds connected to corporations engaged in the war effort.
On-campus activities spilled out into the general population, with protests at military recruitment offices, draft boards, and major marches held across the country. Several protest marches in Washington, D.C. had over 500,000 participants, and may have reached upwards of a million people in attendance.
As the war in Southeast Asia escalated, so did the path of civil disobedience and defiance taken by those most fervently opposed.
Various dramatic protests occurred, catching the public’s attention, such as the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip, both priests, drenching records in blood at a draft board in Baltimore, scores of Vietnam Veterans hurling their hard-fought medals back at the U.S. Capitol, and Muhammad Ali refusing draft induction.
The Origins of the Weathermen
The principal organization mobilizing students on college campuses against the war were the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). At their height in power, SDS had over 300 chapters.
Founded in 1960, their manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, was adopted at the organization’s first convention in June 1962.
Throughout the 1960s, the organization became more radicalized, with leadership almost uniformly adopting the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. The revolutions in China and Cuba had growing influences in the thought of various factions within SDS.
SDS’s last convention would be in Chicago, June of 1969. It was tumultuous with three main factions vying for control of the organization. The majority faction, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), wanted to push its boundaries to create a real revolution in America. Their intention was “bringing the war home.”
RYM leaders Mark Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn wanted to take SDS into the new decade more radical than ever, and under a new name, the Weathermen. The RYM emerged from Chicago as the victorious faction, but SDS was shattered. The convention was the downfall of the once powerful student organization.
Post-convention the RYM changed their name to the Weathermen and published a new manifesto: “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows.” The name came from the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan.
The Days of Rage
The Weathermen’s first activity would occur just four months later, in October of 1969, and it came to be known as Days of Rage. A tremendous amount of organization went into the protest set to take place in Chicago, and 25,000 participants were expected to show up for the militant gathering.
On October 6, the organization blew-up the statue commemorating policemen killed in the Haymarket Massacre of 1886. No one was ever arrested in the bombing.
From October 8 through October 11, a series of running battles between protesters and police took place. A mere 800 protesters showed up, half of them spectators. Protestors would attack and, at times, successfully breach police lines, and then would proceed to smash windows and damage cars in the business district.
The results of the Days of Rage were dozens of police injured, and 287 Weathermen arrested. The organization paid $243,000 to cover bail. Leaders of the organization faced charges of “crossing state lines to foment a riot and conspiring to do so.”
The Weathermen failed to appear for their March 1970 court date, and charges of “Unlawful flight to avoid prosecution” were added when they did not appear. The leaders of the organization went Underground to avoid arrest, and the organization changed its name to the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).
The four-day drama opened the eyes of the Weathermen to the reality that their tactics had failed miserably to gain the broad support that they had originally intended on building.
WUO Tactics Turn Exclusively To Bombings
From 1970 until 1975, the Weather Underground would take credit for some 25 politically-motivated bombings.
Targets hit included the Long Island Court House, the New York Police Department headquarters, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Presidio army base in San Francisco, and the Bank of America headquarters in New York City.
No one was killed in these bombings because the bombers always called in a warning, so the buildings could be evacuated to prevent casualties. The bombings were followed by a communiqué, which was titled the “Weather Report,” used to justify the attacks.
The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list had to expand to 16 to accommodate the activity of the WUO.
On March 6, 1970, three founding members of the WUO were killed when the Greenwich Village townhouse, in which they were constructing bombs, accidentally exploded. Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins died in the explosion, and two other members, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, escaped the rubble and evaded arrest.
Investigators found 57 sticks of dynamite, 30 blasting caps, and timing devices in the building remains.
An interesting photograph exists of actor Dustin Hoffman, who lived in the adjacent townhouse hurrying down the street after evacuating his home, carrying a painting he was able to save.
Can we talk about this picture of Dustin Hoffman fleeing his townhouse in Greenwich Village after the Weather Underground accidentally detonated explosives next door? pic.twitter.com/A0BzMVJ4xd
— Andrew Sprague (@kindboots) January 1, 2018
The Capital Bombing
The most infamous bombing by the WUO occurred March 1, 1971, at the U.S. Capitol Building.
In those days, security was much different at the Capitol. You did not have to empty your pockets and pass through metal detectors. You did not have to show I.D. and there were no security cameras. It was easy to slip away from a crowd of sightseers and be free to search the building for a safe spot to set an explosive device.
The two members of WUO slipped into an unmarked marble-lined men’s bathroom one floor below the Senate chamber. Armed with dynamite, they hooked up a timing device and stuffed the device behind a 5-foot-high wall.
At 1:00 a.m., the warning call came into the Capitol Switchboard, and at 1:32 a.m., the device exploded. No one was injured.
The WUO communication stated the reason for the Capitol attack was the recent invasion of Laos. President Richard Nixon denounced the bombing as a “shocking act of violence that will outrage all Americans.”
Despite hundreds of FBI agents being assigned to the WUO case, no one was ever charged with the Capitol bombing.
The End of the WUO
By 1976, the Weather Underground started to disband, in a process that would take five years. Slowly, several of its members who had lived as fugitives returned to mainstream society.
Because their attorneys were able to prove the FBI had repeatedly violated the law when gathering evidence against the WUO, via COINTELPRO, most members escaped conviction and were given fines and probation instead of jail sentences.
Other Capitol Attacks
The WUO was not the only group to violently attack the U.S. Capitol.
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican Americans pulled handguns and opened fire in the House of Representatives. Five Congressmen were hit, but all survived. The attackers demanded independence for the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
President Jimmy Carter shortened one of the sentences, and in 1979, granted clemency to the other three.
Then on November 7, 1983, a bomb tore through the second floor of the Senate’s north wing of the Capitol. The device detonated late in the evening, and there had been a warning phone call, so no one was injured. There was, however, substantial damage.
The bombing was perpetrated by a group calling itself the May 19 (M19) Communist Organization. They claimed their action was in retaliation for U.S. military actions in Grenada and Lebanon. Seven people were eventually arrested in connection with the attack.
The above three attacks prove that the media and Democrats’ claim that the January 6, 2021 protests were the most disastrous “attack” on the Capitol since the Civil War is simply not true or even remotely in the same ballpark.
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