William Charles Ayers (; born December 26, 1944) is an American retired professor and former community organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow the United States government which they viewed as American imperialism.The Weathermen's founding manifesto, signed by Ayers and ten others, indicates, "The most important task for us toward making the revolution, and the work our collectives should engage in, is the creation of a mass revolutionary movement...akin to the Red Guard in China, based on the full participation and involvement of masses of people...with a full willingness to participate in the violent and illegal struggle. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings resulted in the deaths of three members, who were killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.
Ayers went on to become a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama. Investigations by The New York Times, CNN, and other news organizations concluded that Obama did not have a close relationship with Ayers. He is married to lawyer and law professor Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather Underground.
Early life Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Mary (née Andrew) and Thomas G. Ayers, who was later chairman and chief executive officer of electric utility Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) from 1973 to 1980, and for whom Northwestern's Thomas G. Ayers College of Commerce and Industry was named.Obituary: Thomas Ayers Served as Board Chair from 1975 to 1986 Northwestern University, June 19, 2007 He attended public schools until his second year in high school, when he transferred to Lake Forest Academy, a small prep school.Terry, Don (Chicago Tribune staff reporter, "The calm after the storm" , Chicago Tribune Magazine, p 10, September 16, 2001, June 8, 2008 Ayers earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of Michigan in 1968 (where his father, mother and older brother had preceded him).
Ayers was influenced at a 1965 Ann Arbor teach-in against the Vietnam War, when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Paul Potter, asked his audience, "How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?" Ayers later wrote in his memoir, Fugitive Days, that his reaction was: "You could not be a moral person with the means to act, and stand still. [...] To stand still was to choose indifference. Indifference was the opposite of moral".
In 1965, Ayers joined a picket line protesting an Ann Arbor, Michigan, pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans. His first arrest came for a sit-in at a local draft board, resulting in ten days in jail. His first teaching job came shortly afterward at the Children's Community School, a preschool with a very small enrollment operating in a church basement, founded by a group of students in emulation of the Summerhill method of education.Before "going underground", he published an account of this experience, Education: An American Problem.
The school was a part of the nationwide "free school movement". Schools in the movement had no grades or report cards; they aimed to encourage cooperation rather than competition, and pupils addressed teachers by their first names. Within a few months, at age 21, Ayers became director of the school. There also he met Diana Oughton, who would become his girlfriend until her death in 1970 during an accidental bomb explosion in the Weather Underground townhouse.
Early activism
Ayers became involved in the New Left and the SDS.Fugitive Days: A Memoir He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969 as head of an SDS regional group, the "Jesse James Gang".
The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan, became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weathermen. Before the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS. "During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more pronounced over the year ", disaffected former Weathermen member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Ayers had previously been a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant who was killed in 1970 along with Ayers's girlfriend Oughton and one other member in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, while constructing anti-personnel bombs (nail bombs) intended for a non-commissioned officer dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
In June 1969, the Weathermen took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary. Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket affair confrontation between labor supporters and the Chicago police.Jacobs, Ron, The way the wind blew: a history of the Weather Underground, London & New York: Verso, 1997. The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway. (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970.Adelman. Haymarket Revisited, p. 40. Rebuilding it yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast, and in January 1972 it was moved to Chicago police headquarters).Haymarket Memorial Statue Rededicated at Chicago Police Headquarters Chicago Police Department, June 1, 2007
Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the "War Council" meeting in Flint, Michigan. Two major decisions came out of the "War Council". The first was to immediately begin a violent, armed struggle (e.g., bombings and armed robberies) against the state without first attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The second was to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country.Good, "Brian Flanagan Speaks," Next Left Notes, 2005. Larry Grathwohl, a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant in the Weathermen group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, stated that "Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weathermen".Grathwohl, Larry, and Frank, Reagan, Bringing Down America: An FBI Informant in with the Weathermen, Arlington House, 1977, page 110
Involvement with Weather Underground
After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers's close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers's girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb being assembled in the house exploded, Ayers and several associates evaded pursuit by law enforcement officials. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast and fled. Criminal charges were not initially filed against Ayers at the time of the explosion, but the federal government later did file charges against him.
Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Ayers writes: Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy—weighing close to two pounds—it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days, pg. 261
After the bombing, Ayers became a fugitive. During this time, Ayers and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married and remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations.
In 1973, Ayers co-wrote the book Prairie Fire with other members of the Weather Underground. The book was dedicated to close to 200 people, including Harriet Tubman, John Brown, "All Who Continue to Fight", and "All Political Prisoners in the U.S." The book dedication also included Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.Harvey E. Klehr (1991) Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today, Transaction Publishers, p 108
In 1973, new information came to light about FBI operations targeted against Weather Underground and the New Left, all part of a series of covert and often illegal FBI projects called COINTELPRO.Why Weren't Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn Convicted of Terrorism? Glenrose.net Due to the illegal tactics of FBI agents involved with the program, including conducting wiretaps and property searches without warrants, government attorneys requested all weapons-related and bomb-related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground, including charges against Ayers.Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: the Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 297.Peter Jamison, Riverfront Times, Blown to Peaces , September 16, 2009
However, state charges against Dohrn remained. Dohrn was still reluctant to turn herself in to authorities. "He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own," she later said of Ayers. She turned herself in to authorities in 1980. She was fined $1,500 and given three years probation.Susan Chira, At home with: Bernadine Dohrn; Same Passion, New Tactics , The New York Times, November 18, 1993
Later reflections on underground period
Fugitive Days: A Memoir
In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir, which he explained in part as an attempt to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin's son and his own speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb-makers.Marcia Froelke Coburn, No Regrets , Chicago Magazine, August 2001 Some have questioned the truth, accuracy, and tone of the book. Brent Staples wrote for The New York Times Book Review that "Ayers reminds us often that he can't tell everything without endangering people involved in the story."Staples, Brent, "The Oldest Rad" , book review of Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers in New York Times Book Review, September 30, 2001, accessed June 5, 2008 Historian Jesse Lemisch (himself a former member of SDS) contrasted Ayers's recollections with those of other former members of the Weathermen, and claimed that the book had many errors.Jesse Lemisch, Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack! , New Politics, Summer 2006 Ayers, in the foreword to his book, stated that it was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project.Dinitia Smith, No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen , The New York Times, September 11, 2001 Reviewing Ayers's memoir in Slate Magazine, Timothy Noah said that he could not recall reading "a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as Fugitive Days"."Radical Chic Resurgent", by Timothy Noah , Slate Magazine, August 22, 2001 Studs Terkel called Ayers's memoir "a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world".Fugitive Days: A Memoir at Amazon; scroll down for Terkel blurb.
Statements made in 2001