Oberlin College alum, 'Chicago Seven' member Rennie Davis dies at 80

OBERLIN — Peace activist Rennie Davis, one of the most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War and a member of the "Chicago Seven," died Tuesday. He was 80 years old. Davis was a graduate of Oberlin College, attending from 1958 to 1962. It was at Oberlin that he became known as "a fabulous political organizer for change," said fellow alumnus David Finke. "He was always cheerful, always upbeat, always had a smile on his face. But he was intense. He would work 18 hours a day," Finke remembered in a phone interview Thursday. "He would work until he was exhausted, then drink whiskey to fall asleep and coffee to wake himself back up. … I was active, but Rennie was three times as active as I ever was." Because of their political activism, Finke and Davis lived in the same South Professor Street house while attending Oberlin College, but a year apart. They also both belonged to the Committee of 42, a group formed in 1961 to protest the construction of new dorm buildings without student input. Davis started the Progressive Student League at Oberlin, one of the early campus political movements, and joined the Students for a Democratic Society. But where Finke was focused on calling for nuclear disarmament, Davis' mind turned to economic and cultural problems, including hostilities brewing in far-away Vietnam. They maintained a friendship through the 1960s, even lived down the hall from each other in Chicago. It was Davis who knocked on Finke's door in April 1968 to tell him Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Four months later, Davis was thrust onto the national stage as one of several activists responsible for organizing a Vietnam War protest outside the Democratic National Convention. Denied the proper permits, some 30,000 protesters skirmished in the streets with police and the Illinois National Guard. Davis was hospitalized during the fighting, which an investigating commission later said was a "police riot." Davis and co-defendants David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Lee Weiner — "the Chicago Seven" — were tried on charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot. Their convictions were overturned in federal appeals court. Writer and director Aaron Sorkin told the story in "The Trial of the Chicago 7," released in September 2020 on Netflix. The ensemble cast was headed by Sacha Baron Cohen as Hoffman, with English actor Alex Sharp portraying Davis. On Wednesday, the movie received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Supporting Actor for Cohen, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Song. The cast is also up for a number of Screen Actors Guild nominations, which were announced Thursday. Davis' wife, Kirsten, took to Facebook on Tuesday to announce her husband's death. She said he succumbed to a large lymphoma tumor they had learned about only two weeks prior. "He will be missed beyond words, but I know he has other grand things to do," she wrote. "His beingness will always be a trailblazer and visionary forging the path for humanity's evolution to fully wake up and enter a new paradigm of existence." Contact Jason Hawk at (440) 329-7122 or news@lcnewspapers.com.