David Dellinger

David Dellinger
Dellinger after his arrest for failing to report for his World War II draft physical (August 31, 1943)
Born	David T. Dellinger August 22, 1915 Wakefield, Massachusetts
Died	May 25, 2004(2004-05-25) (aged 88) Montpelier, Vermont
Nationality	USA
Alma mater	Yale University (B.A., Economics, 1936)
Occupation	Writer, activist, pacifist
Known for	political activisim, one of the Chicago Seven
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Peterson
Parent(s)	Raymond Pennington Dellinger Marie Fiske Dellinger

David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change. Dellinger achieved peak notoriety as one of the Chicago Seven who were put on trial in 1968.

Dellinger was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a wealthy family. His father, Raymond Dellinger, a graduate of Yale University, was a lawyer and a prominent Republican and friend of Calvin Coolidge. His maternal grandmother, Alice Bird Fiske, was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Dellinger studied at Yale University and Oxford University, and he also studied theology at Union Theological Seminary with the intention of becoming a Congregationalist minister. At Yale he had been a classmate and friend of the economist and political theorist Walt Rostow. Rejecting his comfortable background, he walked out of Yale one day to live with hobos during the Depression. While at Oxford University, he visited Nazi Germany and drove an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War. Dellinger, who opposed the war's victorious Nationalist fraction led by Francisco Franco, later recalled “After Spain, World War II was simple. I wasn't even tempted to pick up a gun to fight for General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase Manhattan Bank, even if Hitler was running the other side.”