I was active in the civil rights movement as a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Texas in Austin beginning in early 1964. During the summer of 1964 I was in the "White Folks Project" in Biloxi, Mississippi. Our goal was to see if we could reach white Mississippians to create a counter-balance to the Klan and the White Citizens Councils. I returned to Austin and became an SDS campus traveler in the Texas-Oklahoma region in 1964-65. I helped organize students on campuses across that region to demonstrate for civil rights and against the growing war in Vietnam. In 1967-68 I was a national officer of SDS and during the 1970s I lived on a commune in the Arkansas Ozarks. I recently helped with the documentary film about SDS titled "Rebels with a Cause," and have written a book about my experiences in the movement called "Prairie Radical."
Prairie Radical: A Journey Through the Sixties, by Robert Pardun. Memoir of an activist in the civil rights and antiwar movements as a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Robert helped organize the innovative SDS chapter in Austin, Texas, worked in the White Folks Project in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1964 and then became a regional organizer for SDS in the Texas-Oklahoma region. In 1967, as the war in Vietnam grew, Robert was elected to be a national officer of SDS. During the 1970s Robert lived on a commune in rural Arkansas. The memoir is set in the context of what was happening in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the White House, and the FBI and has received very positive reviews from movement veterans.
Prairie Radical (376 pages, illustrated, $15) is available from local bookstores, Amazon.Com, and from Shire Press, 26873 Hester Creek Rd., Los Gatos, CA 95033.
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