Bill Ayers (b. 1944) was a 1960s-era political activist and Weather Underground member. He grew up on the North Shore of Chicago in a privileged upper-middle class family and attended Lake Forest Academy. According to him, he became politicized at the University of Michigan. During his years there, he became involved in the New Left and became aware of what he casts as the injustice of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, inner-city race relations, and police brutality and battle tactics, especially in Chicago during demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Ayers went underground with several comrades after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded in 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing some of the activists involved. He and his colleagues invented identities (often using names such as Nat Turner or Emma Goldman), traveled continuously and avoided the police and FBI during the Vietnam War. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of "extreme governmental misconduct" during the long search for the fugitives. 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Weatherman, also known as the Weather Underground Organization, was a US-based, self-described revolutionary organization of communist men and women formed by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), splintering that organization in the process. ... Chicagos North Shore is a suburban area extending along Lake Michigan from the citys northern border to the northern border of Lake Forest, including municipalities which border the lake, and some to their immediate west. ... An aerial photograph of the Lake Forest Academy campus. ... The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public coeducational university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ... The British New Left (or Old New Left) As a result of Khrushchevs secret speech denouncing Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) ruptured. ... Police brutality is a term used to describe the excessive use of force by police officers. ... Police and protesters at the Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago by the United States Democratic Party, for the purposes of choosing the Democratic nominee for the 1968 U.S. Presidential Election. ... Greenwich Village is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City. ... Nat Turner Preaches Religion. ... Emma Goldman, c. ... The Vietnam War was a war fought roughly from 1957 to 1975 after the North Vietnamese government secretly agreed to begin involvement in South Vietnam. ...
Ayers is now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois. He published his memoirs in 2001 with the book Fugitive Days. The University of Illinois is the set of three public universities in Illinois. ...
References
Ayers, William. 2001. Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0807071242.
Ayers went underground with several comrades after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded in 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing some of the activists involved.
Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of what Ayers described as "extreme governmental misconduct" during the long search for the fugitives.
Ayers is unapologetic about his activities as a radical activist, and writes with pride, "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." He also gleefully recounts his role in breaking Timothy Leary out of jail.
Ayers has had to change some names and places, which he is open about, and he is even more open about the gray areas of memory and the incompleteness of his memoir.
Ayers repeatedly points out how limited his account is, which sometimes comes close to defeating the strengths of the rest of the book.
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