Phillip Abbott Luce
| Phillip Abbott Luce | |
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Phillip Abbott Luce's speech at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), March 22, 1974
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| Born | October 17, 1935 Lancaster, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | December 9, 1998 (aged 63) Springfield, Ohio, U.S. |
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| Occupation | Author and political activist |
| Spouse(s) | Judy Mann, Barbara Turner |
Phillip Abbott Luce (October 17, 1935 – December 9, 1998) was an American author, lecturer and political organizer who had earlier taken leadership roles in communist organizations, mostly the pro-Red Chinese Progress Labor Movement (PLM), only to repudiate them by early 1965. He was indicted in 1963 as one of the main leaders and spokesman for an unauthorized trip to communist Cuba that arranged an audience with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. He was later acquitted in a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which ruled that "Crimes are not to be created by inference." After the breakup, Luce became a leading campus activist in the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), gravitating towards libertarianism by 1970, speaking at the "Left-Right Festival of Liberation" conference in 1970, later known as part of the libertarian Future of Freedom Conference series.
His collegiate education began at Miami University, and later at Mississippi State University in the mid-1950s where he received a B.A. in History. Increasingly concerned over treatment of African Americans, Luce was kicked off the campus newspaper after criticizing the racist policies of the influential Mississippi White Citizens Councils. In 1958 he returned to Ohio and enrolled at Ohio State University and earned his master's degree in political science. His Master’s thesis studied the various racist-prone Mississippi Councils during the years of 1954 to 1958.
In the fall of 1961, Luce resettled in New York City and eventually became an editor of the monthly journal Mainstream, operated by the Maoist-leaning Progressive Labor Movement that changed its name to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in the spring of 1965. He remarked that he joined the PLM "because I had a vision of the future and a hatred for the present." A little later he assumed editorship of Rights that was published under the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and became chairman of Student Committee for Travel to Cuba by 1964 An organizer of the May 2nd Movement (M2M) antiwar protest in Times Square that resulted in forty-seven arrests in August 1964, Luce engaged in a project to secretly store guns in New York City just before and during 1964 Harlem riots, in hopes of "fomenting riots, all as part of bringing on an armed insurrection that would lead to a new American civil war." Luce was involved in the training for a "future guerrilla operation" that included "target practice" sessions on Long Island.
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