Bernardine Dohrn

University of Chicago Law School graduate who became inter-organizational secretary of SDS and a leader of the Weather Underground after the 1969 SDS split. After the March 6, 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion she went underground; added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted list October 14, 1970; lived as a federal fugitive for a decade. Surrendered with Bill Ayers December 1980. Federal charges dropped due to FBI illegalities (COINTELPRO). Pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated battery and bail-jumping; later served 7 months for refusing to testify in Brink's grand jury (1982-83). Dohrn was a leading figure in the radical wing of late-1960s antiwar organizing and became one of the most recognizable public faces of underground militancy tied to the Weather Underground. Her activism argued that conventional protest was insufficient against racism and the Vietnam War, and it helped drive the group toward clandestine tactics that drew intense law-enforcement attention.

As a result, Dohrn spent years as a fugitive and was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. After emerging from hiding in 1980, she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated battery and bail-jumping charges connected to the earlier protest era. In later decades she moved into legal advocacy and academia, including work associated with Bill Ayers and a long teaching career at Northwestern University School of Law.

The Daily Iowan reported that Bernardine Dohrn surrendered in Chicago on December 3, 1980 on seven battery and mob-action counts arising from the 1969 Days of Rage. Judge Fred G. Suria Jr. released her on $25,000 bond that day. Bill Ayers accompanied her, but the article does not report a new arrest of Ayers. Daily Iowan, December 4, 1980, original PDF page 9. Source: https://dailyiowan.lib.uiowa.edu/DI/1980/di1980-12-04.pdf#page=9