Tom Kahn

Who was Tom Kahn?

Tom David Kahn was an American social democrat known for his leadership in several organizations. He was an activist and influential strategist in the African-American civil-rights movement. He was a senior adviser and leader in the U.S. labor movement.

Kahn was raised in New York City. At Brooklyn College, he joined the U.S. socialist movement, where he was influenced by Max Shachtman and Michael Harrington. As an assistant to civil-rights leader Bayard Rustin, Kahn helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, during which Martin Luther King delivered his I have a dream speech. Kahn's analysis of the civil-rights movement influenced Bayard Rustin.

A leader in the Socialist Party of America, Kahn supported its 1972 name change to Social Democrats, USA. Like other leaders of SDUSA, Kahn worked to support free labor-unions and democracy and to oppose Soviet communism; he also worked to strengthen U.S. labor unions. Kahn worked as a senior assistant to and speechwriter for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, AFL–CIO Presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland, and other leaders of the Democratic Party, labor unions, and civil-rights organizations.