Van Lydegraf, Clayton

Clayton Van Lydegraf (1915-1992) was a Pacific Northwest-based political activist whose career as a writer, theorist, and organizer spanned sixty years and a wide spectrum of radical organizations. Born in Salem, Oregon, Van Lydegraf joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in 1933 and participated in the momentous San Francisco General Strike of the following year. During the Second World War, he served as a pilot for the U.S. Air Corps in India in 1944-1945, earning the rank of First Lieutenant and receiving both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

Upon returning to the Seattle area, Van Lydegraf secured a job as a machinist at Boeing and membership in International Association of Machinists (IAF) lodge 79. His continued affiliation with the CPUSA, however, led to his expulsion from the IAF and the loss of his position at Boeing in 1947. He further committed himself to the CPUSA, rising to the office of State Secretary for the Northwest District. In 1956, Van Lydegraf was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he was accused of being a CPUSA saboteur and trainer for the Communist Hukbalahap uprising in the postwar Philippines. He eventually left the CPUSA in the late 1950s over ideological differences, and became a founding member of the Progressive Labor (PL) Party, a revisionist Marxist-Leninist group, in 1961. Van Lydegraf played a prominent role in the Washington State PL until 1967, when he was expelled from the group over arguments in the organization’s political direction.

Van Lydegraf soon began developing contacts and relationships among the various activist groups affiliated with the “New Left” movement then burgeoning in Seattle and Western Washington. To groups like Draft Resistance–Seattle, Peace and Freedom Party, and Students for a Democratic Society, Van Lydegraf served as an ideological link to the “Old Left” of the CPUSA and the PL, a resource of ideological militancy and practical experience gained from decades of activism, available at a time when most of Van Lydegraf’s contemporaries had retired from active agitation. He also became a prodigious and well-respected writer of political works, covering such subjects as Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, black militancy, and revolutionary tactics. He also maintained a correspondence throughout this time with notable Communist thinkers around the world, such as Anna Louise Strong and Rewi Alley. His most notable writings - U.S. Imperialism and the Fascist Danger (1967), The Object is to Win (1967), and The Movement and the Workers (1969) – all date from this period.

By the mid-1970s, Van Lydegraf’s increasingly strident avocation of direct and violent revolutionary action against the American political establishment placed him on the fringes of the radical left, where he affiliated himself with the Weather Underground Organization (WUO). In 1974, he co-founded and led the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), an above-ground support arm of the WUO which specialized in publishing, communications, and providing supplies to WUO members in hiding. In 1977, Van Lydegraf, along with four other radicals connected to the PFOC, was arrested for the planned bombing of the offices of conservative California State Senator John Briggs. The “L.A. five,” as they were known in press coverage, received a prominent trial, in which Lydegraf pleaded no contest to charges of conspiracy and possession of explosives. He would spend a total of two years in prison.

Following his release in 1980, Van Lydegraf ceased active participation in revolutionary activities, though he remained involved in activism for various causes, such as Native American rights. He died of cancer in 1992 in Oakland, CA.

From the guide to the Clayton Van Lydegraf papers, 1944-1991, (University of Washington Libraries Special Collections)