Three Weather Underground members were killed when a bomb they had built exploded in the basement of a townhouse in Greenwich Village on March 6, 1970. In the days following the explosion, police found 57 sticks of dynamite, four completed bombs, detonators, timing devices, and other bomb-making equipment. Bettmann/Corbis photo.
On January 29, 1975, an explosion rocked the headquarters of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. No one was hurt, but the damage was extensive, impacting 20 offices on three separate floors. Hours later, another bomb was found at a military induction center in Oakland, California, and safely detonated.
A domestic terrorist group called the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for both bombs. Originally called the Weatherman or the Weathermen, a name taken from a line in a Bob Dylan song, the Weather Underground was a small, violent offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, a group created in the turbulent ‘60s to promote social change.
When SDS collapsed in 1969, the Weather Underground stepped forward, inspired by communist ideologies and embracing violence and crime as a way to protest racism, and other left-wing aims. “Our intention is to disrupt the empire ... to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks,” claimed the group’s 1974 manifesto, Prairie Fire.
By the next year, the group had claimed credit for 25 bombings—including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California Attorney General’s office, and a New York City police station.
