Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

Abstract

In 1960 the leaders of the reformist‐oriented Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) decided to change the name of the organization to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). By the end of the decade SDS would become the largest, most influential student political group in the United States, its members organizing and protesting against poverty and racism, and notoriously resisting the war in Vietnam and US imperialism. SDS was a central force in the growth of the New Left in the US, and, like the movement of which it was a part, it was full of contradictions and turmoil.