Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Printed Ephemera Collection on Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a radical student group born from the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), which was the student branch of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), a social democratic organization. The group was expelled from the LID in 1965 and gained national prominence in the late 1960s as the Students for a Democratic Society.

In 1962, SDS held its first national convention in Port Huron, Michigan, where the membership adopted the eponymous "Port Huron Statement" as its political manifesto. The manifesto was drafted by Tom Hayden, but convention members helped craft it into its final form. While not pro-Soviet Union, SDS did not take an anti-communist approach in their organizing activities. This issue led to trouble with the League for Industrial Democracy and an eventual split from the parent organization. SDS organized around numerous issues, including opposing the Vietnam War, the draft, and participatory democracy. In April 1965, SDS organized the March on Washington opposing the war in Vietnam, which drew tens of thousands of people and situated SDS nationally as one of the primary organizations of the New Left. Organizing around civil rights issues, SDS was inspired by the work of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. SDS was primarily a campus organization, but began to spread to more community-oriented projects like the Economic Research and Action Project and Chicago JOIN projects.

During 1968, SDS experienced increased factionalism involving Progressive Labor (PL) members and the RYM I (Revolutionary Youth Movement) group, which advocated for a more student-oriented, militant, counter-cultural program. The June 1968 SDS National Convention was full of discord. PL supporters gained policy victories that stressed attempts to gain working-class support, but RYM I and other non-committed delegates continued to dominate the organization's leadership positions. SDS persevered and remained in the center of student protests like the Columbia University strike in the spring of 1968 and the activities at the Democratic National Convention that summer in Chicago.

After being at the forefront of the New Left during the 1960s, internal pressures surfaced again at the June 1969 National Convention. SDS split into three factions: PL, Weathermen, and RYM II. This latter group, composed of diverse, moderate SDSers, collapsed within a year due to its inability to develop a coherent activist program. The Weathermen, which included many of the national leaders and staff members, sought to initiate an immediate revolution; within six months, the organization had gone underground and its leaders were wanted in connection with mob violence and bombing. SDS-PL continues today as an off-shoot of the Progressive Labor Party.