Children of Radicals Write to Understand Their Legacies

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Zayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark, writers with new books, meeting for the first time in New York.Credit...Sara Messinger for The New York TimesMom and Dad Were Radicals. In Two Books, Their Children Write to Understand.Zayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark on activism, violence, guilt and trying to make sense of their “incomprehensible” early days.Zayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark, writers with new books, meeting for the first time in New York.Credit...Sara Messinger for The New York TimesMay 20, 2026Updated 7:24 a.m. ETZayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark spent much of their adult lives not writing about their parents.Dohrn, 49, is a son of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, founders of the 1960s militant group the Weathermen and its later iteration, the Weather Underground, which aimed to “bring the war home” by bombing government and other public buildings. His earliest years were spent on the run with his parents, changing homes and names to avoid the F.B.I., which had placed his mother on its Most Wanted list.Clark, 45, is the daughter of Judith Clark, a former member of the Weathermen and a spinoff group, the May 19 Communist Organization. In 1981, when Harriet was less than a year old, her mother was arrested and ultimately sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for her role as a getaway driver in an armored car robbery that ended in the deaths of a security guard and two police officers. (Her father died in 2009.)For nearly 40 years, Harriet Clark saw her mother only in the visitors’ area of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, with no expectation that that would ever change, until her mother was granted parole in 2019.Now, with the film “One Battle After Another,” about a revolutionary group loosely resembling the Weathermen, still echoing in the atmosphere, Dohrn and Clark have new books examining the public and private legacies of their parents’ radical activities.ImageA 1970 Chicago police department bulletin shows figures wanted by the F.B.I., including Bernadine Dohrn (top, second from left) and Judith Clark (bottom, second from left).Credit...Associated PressHe documents the history of the movement and life on the run in “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.” Her book, “The Hill,” which was two decades in the writing, is a novel about a girl growing up with her mother serving life in a prison much like Bedford Hills.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT