ABSTRACT
At 72, I look back with pride and compassion—as well as gratitude—to the Port Huron Conference and the years surrounding it, when I was active in Students for a Democratic Society. Pride because we were determined, organized, and active in a wide movement that accomplished sweeping changes. Compassion because we were young, intensely focused on the change we wanted and how to get there, and hurting in ways we didn’t understand or didn’t believe were worthy. Compassion also as a memory of how we felt for the people who were without justice or the blessings we had known as a birthright. Some of us, and I was one, were filled with fear that our world would be set ablaze in a nuclear holocaust at any moment. We were filled with guilt—or urgency—about the wrongs of segregation and poverty and couldn’t spare a moment for “frivolous” personal joy. I personally was troubled (depressed, we would say now) and uncertain of my direction in the adult life I was entering after college.
