David Dellinger

David Dellinger was born in 1915 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. While at Yale University, he was arrested for demonstrating for the trade union movement. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa in economics, he worked in a factory and lived among the homeless. As a fellow at Oxford University, he drove an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War. Back in New York, he enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary. He spent three years in federal prison, starting in 1940, for refusing military service, and was physically abused during solitary confinement. As a radical pacifist, Dellinger opposed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Vietnam War. His friends included Dr. Martin Luther King and the Berrigans, and he was one of the notorious Chicago Seven. In 2001, at age 85, he protested against the NAFTA treaty. His books include his autobiography, From Yale to Jail (1996). He died in 2004.