Dohrn, Bernardine (1942–)

A former member of the violent revolutionary organization Weatherman, Bernardine Dohrn led the “Days of Rage” riots in Chicago and was once a notorious fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

While in law school at the University of Chicago, Dohrn had the opportunity to work with Martin Luther King Jr. in efforts at alleviating poverty in Chicago. She also worked closely with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights group. Her activism led her to become involved with an organization called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an activist group originally focused on promoting civil rights and ending the Vietnam War that became increasingly radical as the 1960s progressed.

After law school, Dohrn traveled around the United States to recruit members for SDS. One of the organization's largest protests occurred at Columbia University in 1968. Students had discovered that the university was secretly doing war research for the government, and they staged a riot in protest. The police were called in to remove the protestors, forcibly when necessary. Following this event, Dohrn was elected the interorganizational secretary for the SDS. Although she was now a national officer, Dohrn didn't feel as if she was taking enough risks to further the movement.

Dohrn became one of the more militant members of the SDS. At the group's national convention in 1969, these members banded together and broke off from the SDS to form the militant faction known as Weatherman, later also known as the Weather Underground. Their first and best-known action was the rioting known as the “Days of [Page 162]Rage” in the streets of Chicago. Led by Dohrn, and beginning on October 8, 1969, members of Weatherman looted downtown Chicago and engaged in a struggle with the local police force for four days.

In 1970, a bomb the group was manufacturing in a Greenwich Village townhouse exploded and killed three group members: Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins. With the FBI hot on their heels, the remaining members of Weatherman went underground and disappeared. Several members, including Dohrn, were on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

Dohrn married fellow member Bill Ayers, continued her work for the group underground, and remained one step ahead of the law for 11 years. On December 3, 1980, after having her second child and tired of hiding, she turned herself in to the authorities in Chicago. Her charges were reduced to misdemeanors and she was put on probation for three years. In the late 1990s Dohrn became the director of the Children and Family Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law.