Terry Robbins
| Terry Robbins | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 4, 1947 Queens County, New York, USA |
| Died | March 6, 1970 (aged 22) New York City, New York, USA |
| Known for | Student activism |
Terry Robbins (October 4, 1947 – March 6, 1970) was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society (The S.D.S.), and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
Terry Robbins was raised in Queens County, New York by his mother Olga, a Hunter College alumna, and his father Sam, who worked at a garment factory. When Robbins was six years old, his mother began to suffer from breast cancer, which eventually caused her death three years later. As Olga's health deteriorated, Robbins’ father hired a domestic worker, nicknamed "Auntie Annie" by Robbins and his sister. "Auntie Annie" remained in the Robbins employ for two years until Olga died.
Two years after his mother’s death, Robbins' father remarried. Robbins became withdrawn and buried himself in schoolwork.He also began to turn to poetry and music as a refuge, and with his sister and cousins discovered the musical world of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand. Robbins, an avid pop music fan, drew particular inspiration from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965), a Top 40 single by Columbia Records artist Bob Dylan, which would have a profound influence on forming Robbins' personal and SDS/Weathermen identity.
After graduating from Lawrence High School on Long Island, Robbins attended Kenyon College in Ohio in the fall of 1964 and majored in English. In his first year of college, Robbins heard about Dickie Magidoff, a member of a far left political group called Students for a Democratic Society, who was working in the Cleveland area. In the summer of 1965, he joined Magidoff and became involved in the what they called the "Cleveland Economic Research and Action Project (Cleveland ERAP)" which exposed him to a more SDS members. He moved into the Cleveland ERAP house and began helping raise capital to support their efforts. In the fall of 1965, the beginning of his sophomore year, Robbins was eager to start up his own SDS chapter at the Kenyon College campus; he was the only official SDS member during his time there. In the following 1966 spring semester, he was able to team up with the chaplain of the school and organize a Student-Faculty Committee on the Vietnam War. In an informal letter to Dickie Magidoff, Robbins spoke of his successful strategy at the Kenyon College campus and how he was able to get the support of “five faculty members and at least eighteen students to gather together and attempt to make a case for a critical approach to American foreign policy.”
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