[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 192 (Monday, December 12, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1246-E1247]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING STAUGHTON LYND

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. TIM RYAN

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 12, 2022

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of 
Staughton Lynd, who passed away on Thursday, November 17, 2022. He was 
92 years old.
  Staughton was born in 1929, the son of Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd. 
Staughton grew up in New York City, during the Great Depression and 
World War II. He went through the schools of the Ethical Culture 
Society, where he took to heart the words in the auditorium, ``The 
place where men meet to seek the highest is holy ground.'' As a senior 
at Fieldston, he was elected class president and captain of the 
baseball team. Staughton received a Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard, 
Master of Arts and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees in history from 
Columbia and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Chicago.
  Staughton Lynd and Alice Lee Niles met in Cambridge, Mass., in the 
summer of 1950, shortly after the beginning of the Korean war. They 
were married a year later, at the Stony Run Friends Meetinghouse in 
Baltimore, where Alice's parents were members.
  During the mid-1950s, they lived in an ecumenical religious community 
in northeast Georgia. Several years later, they joined the Religious 
Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.
  Eager to participate in the Southern civil rights movement, in 1961, 
Staughton accepted an offer to teach history at Spelman College in 
Atlanta.
  In 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 
recruited him to be coordinator of the ``Freedom Schools'' for black 
teenagers as part of the interracial ``Mississippi Summer Project.'' At 
a time when whites were becoming less welcome in the civil rights 
movement in the South, in 1964, Staughton accepted a position teaching 
history at Yale University and the Lynds moved to New Haven, 
Connecticut.
  Staughton chaired the first march against the war in Vietnam in 
Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1965. On August 9, 1965, he was arrested 
together with Bob Moses and David Dellinger at the Assembly of 
Unrepresented People in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators sought to 
declare peace with the people of Vietnam on the steps of the Capitol. 
In December 1965 through January 1966, Staughton, along with Tom Hayden 
and Herbert Aptheker made a controversial trip to Hanoi in hopes of 
clarifying the peace terms that might be acceptable to the North 
Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front of South 
Vietnam. Because of his notoriety and controversy over his advocacy

[[Page E1247]]

and practice of civil disobedience, he was denied tenure at Yale and 
was blacklisted as an historian.
  In order to respond to the needs of workers whose problems were not 
being addressed, Staughton went to law school in 1973. Following his 
graduation in 1976, the Lynds moved to the Youngstown area, shortly 
before the steel mill closings began. While employed by Northeast Ohio 
Legal Services, an office that represented clients who could not afford 
to pay a lawyer, Staughton served as attorney for the Ecumenical 
Coalition of the Mahoning Valley in its unsuccessful efforts to 
implement a plan for worker/community ownership of the area steel 
mills: Local 1330 vs. U.S. Steel.
  After retirement in 1996, the Lynds became deeply involved in 
advocacy for prisoners. They served as co-counsel in a class action on 
placement and retention of prisoners in solitary confinement at the 
Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. A favorable decision in Austin 
vs. Wilkinson (N.D. Ohio, 2002), was affirmed in part by the U.S. 
Supreme Court in Wilkinson vs. Austin (2005).
  Among many books and articles by Staughton Lynd, some of which were 
co-authored with Alice Lynd, the following titles reflect their many 
concerns over the years: Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States 
Constitution, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism with Alice 
Lynd; Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History with Alice Lynd; 
Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers; The 
Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings; Living 
Inside Our Hope: A Steadfast Radical's Thoughts on Rebuilding the 
Movement; Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E. P. Thompson, Howard 
Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below; ``We Are All 
Leaders'': The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930 with Andrej 
Grubacic, Wobblies and Zapatistas; Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, 
and Radical History with Daniel Gross; Labor Law for the Rank and 
Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law with Sam 
Bahour and Alice Lynd; Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and 
Palestinians; Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change Lucasville: The 
Untold Story of a Prison Uprising with Alice Lynd; Stepping Stones: 
Memoir of a Life Together; Moral Injury and Nonviolent Resistance: 
Breaking the Cycle of Violence in the Military and Behind Bars, 
forthcoming from Haymarket Press, 2023, edited by Luke Stewart; and My 
Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd's Writings, Speeches, and 
Statements against the Vietnam War.
  Staughton Lynd is survived by Alice Lynd, his wife of 71 years; their 
daughter, Barbara L. Bond; their son, Lee Rybeck Lynd; their daughter, 
Marta Lynd-Altan; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

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