AADL Talks To: Bill Lynn, Former Member of the Mojo Boogie Band, Retired Musician and Auctioneer

Mon, 08/11/2025 - 12:10pm

Bill Lynn is a musician who lived in Ann Arbor during the late 1960s and 1970s, where he was part of the popular Mojo Boogie Band. Bill recalls living in Ann Arbor during the heyday of the counterculture movement. He reminisces about friends, band members, anti-war protests, draft dodging techniques, the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, favorite local venues, the changing national music scene, and tells stories about friendships and colleagues, including John Sinclair, the Tate Brothers, JC Crawford, and musician Andrew Williams. Additional stories can be found in the Bill Lynn Collection.
 

AADL Talks To: Bill Ayers, Former U-M Student Activist and Member of the SDS and Weather Underground

Wed, 04/03/2024 - 10:21am

Bill Ayers is a retired Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. During his time in Ann Arbor during the 1960s, he served as director of Ann Arbor's experimental Children's Community School; Education Secretary for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); and co-founder of the militant Weather Underground organization, which originated in Ann Arbor in 1969 as a far left-wing revolutionary party. 

Ayers traces the path of his political awakening from wide-eyed college freshman to seasoned student organizer and educator. He reflects on the tumultuous moral dilemma he and many activists faced as the Vietnam War raged on in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He discusses the factionalism within the SDS leadership that resulted in the formation of the Weather Underground; how the strands of student activism during this turbulent time were rooted in the moral agenda outlined by Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; and his lifelong pedagogic commitment to education.