Charles “Chip” Young was a journalism student who attended the University of Wisconsin from 1977 through 1984. Young was active in the Revolutionary Student Brigade and later in the Progressive Student Organization, and for a time he lived at 403 Washburn, an address at which members of those organizations had resided for several years. In the attic of this building he found several cartons of records and banners pertaining to the political activities of the early residents of the house. After apparently spending some time in organizing the material, Young presented it to the Historical Society in 1984. He also provided much of the information herein on the Madison history of the documented organizations.
The records date to the early 1970's, a period when the left-wing of the anti-war movement in Madison was fragmented and discouraged. During the spring of 1972 various groups including the Wisconsin Student Association, the Asian-American student group, the “Red Ed” education project, the Revolutionary Union (an SDS splinter group), and the Radical Teaching Assistants United Around the 9-Point Peace Plan organized against the war as what they called the United Front. Eventually anti-imperialist elements from the United Front coalition organized into the Movement for Political and Economic Democracy. Because of internal disunity former members of the Revolutionary Union eventually left MPED and formed the Madison Anti-Imperialist Organization on February 7, 1973. Later that year several members of MAIO attended a national convention of the Attica Brigade and, in an effort to link various other radical groups, eventually became part of that organization. On May 5, 1973 Madison hosted a convention of mid-western Attica Brigade chapters and soon after publicly began to identify itself as the Madison chapter of the Attica Brigade.
The national Attica Brigade was formed in New York in 1971 in order to take part in a mass anti-war demonstration. However, unlike any of the other anti-war groups its dissent was not focused on Vietnam alone but on the entire U.S. foreign policy question. Gradually the definition of imperialism was even further expanded to include protest against internal oppression. Thus the Madison Attica Brigade was not only active in anti-war teach-ins and demonstrations, but also in feminist and Black activities and particularly in protests against state budget cuts and tuition hikes. For reasons not documented in the collection many members of the Attica Brigade moved into the Revolutionary Student Brigade, the youth arm of the Revolutionary Communist Party. According to Young this took place in Madison around 1974. Subsequent evolutions of this element of the Madison radical student movement are traced on the following chart which was provided by Charles Young:
| Students for a Democratic Society (disintegrated because torn by factionalism) |
| Revolutionary Union (one of the Maoist factions of SDS; became the national revolutionary organization) |
| Attica Brigade (developed from Attica prison revolt support group into the student organization of the RU, in 1971/1972.) |
| Madison Anti-Imperialist Organization (started in 1971 in Madison, then incorporated into AB) |
| Revolutionary Student Brigade (formed around 1974, eventually becoming the youth group of the Revolutionary Communist Party) |
| Revolutionary Communist Party (formed by the RU as the new Communist national party, 1976. RCP split in 1978 into a continuing RCP and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters) |
| Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (an RCP front group, active 1976-1978) |
| Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (a re-named version of RSB, formed in 19??) |
| Revolutionary Workers Headquarters: Madison RWH took on the old name of RSB and evolved into the Revolutionary Student Union, Progressive Student Organization, and Progressive Student Network (circa 1980, loosely tied to national PSN) |
