By the time I met her in the mid-’70s, she was a stalwart of something called the May 19th Communist Organization. A dogmatic offshoot of the Weathermen, May 19th’s members believed that a black-led revolution in America was in the offing. The correct role for white radicals, they held, was to follow that lead, wherever it took them. Even those of us who cared about the issues the May 19th crowd trumpeted — racism, poor housing, deaths in police custody — were often suspect for not showing proper fervor.

On Oct. 20, 1981, a band of militant zealots armed with automatic weapons tried to rob a Brink’s truck in a shopping mall in Nanuet in Rockland County, N.Y. Before it was over, two armored-car guards were shot and two police officers — one black and one white — were gunned down at a roadblock. The crime was one of the last spasms of ’60s-style, left-wing violence. To the militants, it was an “expropriation” for something they called the Republic of New Afrika, a place that existed mainly in their fevered dreams.

Judith Clark was one of four people arrested that day for armed robbery and murder. She was 31, a veteran of the white left who traveled the radical arc from student protest to the Weathermen to the fringes beyond. A new single mother, she kissed her infant daughter goodbye that morning, promising to be home soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/magazine/judith-clarks-radical-transformation.html?_r=1&hp

 

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Does it matter that she's white?