Tom Hayden is an American social and political activist, author, and politician who is the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center. He is married to actress Barbara Williams. In 1993, the couple married. Tom Garity Garity is the son of Genevieve Isabelle Garity and John Francis Hayden. He received his diploma from Dondero High School. Phil Ochs, Introduction to the Enemy: There but for Fortune is his popular film.

Tom Hayden was married three times. His first marriage was to Casey Cason. In 1961, the couple married and divorced in 1962. Then he married Jane Fonda, an actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. In 1973, the couple married, and in 1990, they divorced. Their son’s name is Troy Garity. He was born on July 7, 1973. Diallo Hayden, the son of Liam Jack and Barbara Williams, was born on March 26, 2000.

Childhood and activism

Genevieve Isabelle (née Garity) and John Francis Hayden, both of Irish ancestry, gave birth to Thomas Emmet Hayden in Royal Oak, Michigan. His father was a former Marine who worked as an accountant for Chrysler and was also a violent alcoholic.
Hayden’s parents divorced when he was 10 years old, and he was raised by his mother. Hayden grew up in a church led by Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest known for his anti-Semitic teachings and also known as the “radio priest” during the Great Depression.

Hayden’s displeasure with Coughlin drove him to leave the Catholic Church as a teenager.

Dondero High School in Royal Oak, Michigan was Hayden’s alma mater. He was the editor of the school newspaper, and in his farewell column, he used the first letter of each successive paragraph to spell “Go to hell.” As a result, he was barred from attending his graduation ceremony in 1956 and received only a diploma.

Hayden then went to the University of Michigan, where he worked as the editor of the Michigan Daily. Hayden witnessed Sandra Cason’s dramatic intervention at the National Student Association convention in Minneapolis in August 1960. To a standing ovation, she resisted a motion to deny support for sit-ins in the fight against racial segregation, saying, “I cannot say to a person who suffers injustice, ‘Wait.’ And having decided that I cannot urge caution, I must stand with him.” Alan Haber of the fledgling Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) immediately recruited her. Hayden was drawn to her “ability to think morally [and] express herself poetically,” and he soon joined her in the left-wing grouping.  They married the following October.

Despite being beaten senseless by a white mob while covering the Freedom Rides for the National Student News in McComb, Mississippi, Hayden became a Freedom Rider. The Haydens took part in one of the many “freedom rides” held in response to the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia decision on December 10, 1961. Hayden began writing the SDS manifesto from a prison cell in Albany, Georgia, where their ride was supposed to drop him off.

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