Out from Underground

Outlaw violence in America has long had a romantic aura. In the 1967 movie version of their story, Bonnie and Clyde rob a bank but don’t take money from waiting customers. It was rumored that when the sad-eyed gunman of their era, Pretty Boy Floyd, robbed banks, he also tore up mortgages. Woody Guthrie burnished the myth: And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home. The militant sect the Weathermen, soon to become the Weather Underground, was formed in 1969, at a time when the United States was riven by bitter divisions. It took its name from Bob Dylan’s line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” One member openly praised Bonnie and Clyde, calling them “consciousness-expanding.” The group idolized the movements that had brought revolutionary regimes to power in North Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere. Its members—many of whom had been upper-middle-class students at elite colleges—savored the heady belief that they were on the side of oppressed people everywhere, both in the Global South and among the Black population of the US.The Weather Underground—like millions...