Activist

Born: December 11, 1939;

Died: October 23, 2016

TOM Hayden, who has died aged 76, was a famed 1960s anti-war activist whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago 8 trial, Vietnam War protests and his ex-wife actress Jane Fonda.

Hayden, once denounced as a traitor by his detractors, overcame his past and won election to the California Assembly and Senate, where he served for almost two decades as a progressive force on such issues as the environment and education. He was the only one of the radical Chicago 8 defendants to win such distinction in the mainstream political world. He remained an enduring voice against war and spent his later years as a prolific writer and lecturer advocating for reform of America's political institutions.

Hayden wrote or edited 19 books, including Reunion, a memoir of his path to protest and a rumination on the political upheavals of the 1960s.

Hayden was there at the start. In 1960, while a student at the University of Michigan, he was involved in the formation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), then dedicated to desegregating the South. By 1962, when he began drafting the landmark Port Huron Statement, SDS and Mr Hayden were dedicated to changing the world.

"We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably at the world we inherit," began the statement which outlined a plan for a revolutionary campus social movement.

Hayden was fond of comparing the student movement that followed to the American Revolution and the Civil War.

In 1968, he helped organise anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago which turned violent and resulted in the notorious Chicago 7 trial. It began as the Chicago 8 but one defendant, Bobby Seale, was denied the lawyer of his choice, was bound and gagged by the judge and ultimately received a separate trial.

After a circus-like trial, Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were later overturned, and an official report deemed the violence "a police riot".

The trial became the subject of books, a play and Hayden's own reflections in Voices Of The Chicago 8: A Generation On Trial.

Thomas Emmet Hayden was born on December 11 1939 in Royal Oak, Michigan, to middle-class parents. At Michigan University, he took up political causes including the civil rights movement. He wrote fiery editorials for the campus newspaper and contemplated a career in journalism. But upon graduation, he turned down a newspaper job. As he wrote in his memoir: "I didn't want to report on the world; I wanted to change it."

He joined the fledgling Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) and was beaten and briefly jailed in Mississippi and Georgia. He married a fellow activist, Sandra "Casey" Cason, and together they witnessed the violence of the battle against segregation.

In 1965, he made his first visit to North Vietnam with an unauthorised delegation. He found out later that his movements were being tracked and recorded by the FBI, as they would be from then on.

Firmly committed to the anti-war movement, Hayden participated in sit-ins at Columbia University but a single event galvanised him - the 1968 assassination of his friend, Senator Robert F Kennedy, in Los Angeles. Police assaults on student demonstrators in Chicago seemed to confirm his belief. But he later said he was wrong. "It's fair to say the system reformed itself," he said.

In 1971, Hayden met Jane Fonda, a latecomer to the protest movement. After he heard her give an eloquent anti-war speech in 1972, he said they connected and became a couple. He was divorced from Ms Cason and had been through other romances. Fonda was divorced from director Roger Vadim and had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim. They were married for 17 years and had a son, Troy.

Both Hayden and Fonda were demonised by the political right after she visited Vietnam and was photographed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. It took many decades to minimise her "Hanoi Jane" moniker.

With heavy financial support from Fonda, Hayden plunged into California politics in the late 1970s. He formed the Campaign for Economic Democracy and was elected to the Assembly in 1982.

In 1992, he won election to the state Senate advocating for environmental and educational issues. However, his radical past disturbed conservatives and interfered with his legislative initiatives.

Mr Hayden acknowledged in his memoir that his time as a counter-culture rebel had been the most exciting and fulfilling of his life.

"Whatever the future holds and as satisfying as my life is today," he wrote, "I miss the '60s and I always will."

Hayden is survived by his wife, Barbara Williams, their adopted son, Liam and Troy, his son with Fonda.