Chicago 7 Follow Different Paths in Middle Age, Keep Their Old Ideals

They were left-wing activists whose courtroom antics and commitment to political change reflected a generation of angry youths disillusioned by a nation in undeclared war thousands of miles away.

The defendants who won national attention in the Chicago Seven trial are middle-aged and grayer now, one the author of a barbecue cookbook, another a professional party-giver; many are fathers and husbands.

But most remain committed to a watered-down brand of the activism that made them household names 20 years ago.

“A lot of people tell me I’m selling out because I wrote a cookbook,” said former Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, 51, whose “Barbequen with Bobby” was recently published.

“I say: ‘Why do you want to pigeonhole me?’ ” Seale said. “I still believe in revolving political and economic power back to the hands of the people.”

Charged With Conspiracy

Seale and seven others were charged with conspiracy to incite violence in August, 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The 4 1/2-month theatrics featured wild-haired defendants whose antics included wearing judicial robes to court, taking them off and stomping on them, and a 74-year-old judge who refused to allow Seale his own attorney and ordered him bound and gagged in the courtroom when he protested.

“I think it certainly was a microcosm of the times,” former defendant John Froines said, “but it was also theater, so it was an exaggerated statement of the times as well.

“When Abbie Hoffman said that the judge came right out of central casting, it was true. Instead of them picking a liberal judge who was very restrained, they picked a very harsh, prejudiced jurist who in a sense kind of reflected the kind of oppression that people were . . . talking about as being the nature of America at the time.”

Seale Convicted Separately

The case opened in September, 1969, and became known as the Chicago Seven trial when U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman severed Seale’s case from the others, convicted him of contempt of court and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Five of the other seven defendants--Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin--also were charged with crossing state lines with intent to riot and were found guilty in February, 1970.

Froines and Lee Weiner were acquitted. None of the defendants were convicted of the conspiracy charge.

The five convictions and Seale’s contempt citation later were overturned by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which cited errors by Hoffman and criticized his courtroom demeanor.

The seven defendants and their attorneys also were cited for contempt of court nearly 200 times but all but 15 of the citations were dismissed.

In a 1982 interview, a year before his death at age 87, Hoffman said the defendants had made a mockery of the nation’s highest trial court.

Sixth Amendment Cited

Most have no regrets about their behavior during the trial.

“I was standing up for the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution,” Seale said, “that every citizen has the right to have legal counsel of his choice.

“I never disrupted the courtroom unless my name was mentioned. ‘But judge,’ I’d say, ‘you’re a racist fascist dog; you denied me my constitutional rights.’ ”

Seale, a father of three, now works in minority recruitment at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is doing graduate work in political science and African-American Studies.

He also works in a program aimed at getting students into community service and social action.

“I’ve refined my perspective a lot,” Seale said. “I stopped advocating overthrowing the government when the government stopped trying to overthrow our organization.”

He plans to use proceeds from his cookbook to fund scholarships for minority college students.

Hoffman Still Protests

Former Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, one of the brashest of the defendants during the trial, remains one of the most politically involved.

“I’m an American dissident,” said Hoffman, now 51 and a father of three.

He has made a career of political protests and has been arrested numerous times in recent years in demonstrations against South African apartheid, environmental hazards and other causes.

“I don’t think my goals have changed since I was 4 and I fought schoolyard bullies,” said Hoffman, who rents a home in New Hope, Pa.

Fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin now owns a New York company that produces parties for yuppies at Manhattan’s poshest nightclubs.

Twenty years ago, Rubin called his indictment “the Academy Award of protest.” At age 50, with a wife and infant daughter, he said: “My protest days are over.”

But he is proud of his actions in the days of rebellion. “We shook up the country; we fought authority, illegitimate authority. I woke up the country to immorality in authoritative places.

“When I think about it . . . I miss the sense of purpose, I miss the sense of righteous anger. . . . But I’m much healthier than I was then.”

‘I’m Political Now’

Co-defendant Lee Weiner said: “I was political then; I’m political now.”

Then, Weiner was a bearded 29-year-old Northwestern University research assistant and anti-war activist who read books in the courtroom during the trial.

Now, he is a 48-year-old father of four and runs a direct-mail firm in Washington for nonprofit organizations and political clients.

“I still consider myself utterly committed to the pursuit of social justice in the political context,” said Weiner, who has taken part in recent protests for more AIDS research and for Soviet Jews.

Weiner said he and the other defendants “weren’t a bunch of wild radicals,” but were dedicated to a belief that “people can and should be able to live better together . . . and to a ferocious refusal to accept injustice as simply a given part of our lives.”

Froines, now a professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health, was a Yale University graduate with a Ph.D. in chemistry who decided to spend the summer of 1968 in Chicago with his in-laws before taking a faculty position in Oregon.

Froines had done community organizing work with Hayden and Davis and “decided to get involved” in the demonstrations.

‘Different Time and Place’

“I’m not an activist now, which isn’t to say that I have turned away from activism,” said Froines, 48, who served in the Carter Administration as director of toxic substances at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“It’s just that it’s a different time and place. I still believe in progressive ideas and try to work that out in a different context.”

A father of two, Froines champions environmental health issues at UCLA and has a 20-year-old daughter who has taken part in campus activism.

Davis is in his late 40s and lives in the Denver area, where he sold life insurance for a while and dabbled in Hinduism.

Dellinger, 72, a lifelong peace activist, lives in Peacham, Vt., and has been active in protests against U.S. involvement in Nicaragua.

Hayden, 48, is a three-term California assemblyman who espouses liberal causes and has been married to actress Jane Fonda for 15 years.

‘Uplifting and Focusing’

“The ‘60s were a decade of great achievement balanced by agony and tragedy,” Hayden said. “It was a time that was very uplifting and focusing and we haven’t had a decade like that since.

“I’ve gone in a circle that began in the early ‘60s and went from idealism to a bitter hostility to everything the government was doing back to a renewed idealism. . . .

“I’m thankful that I’ve survived and that my sense of idealism remains, and that I try to be like the person I was at the beginning of the ‘60s.”

Froines said he is not nostalgic about the ‘60s but “would hope that it would happen again.

“Society progresses by people getting angry and doing things. It was a great period. I feel really strongly that societies need that kind of tension in order to progress. I think that it was a very, very good time.”