Introduction Movements Eras Organizations Index Contributions
About Organizations
Black Panther Party Black Liberation Army American Indian Movement FALN Weather Underground Earth Liberation Front Animal Liberation Front MOVE Republic of New Afrika Symbionese Liberation Army Los Macheteros United Freedom Front May 19th Communist Organization Young Lords George Jackson Brigade Students for a Democratic Society Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Industrial Workers of the World Communist Party USA Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Brown Berets Socialist Workers Party African People's Socialist Party Nation of Islam
About Weather Underground
SDS Split & the Weatherman Faction Days of Rage Haymarket Police Monument Bombing Greenwich Village Townhouse Explosion New York Police Headquarters Bombing Timothy Leary Prison Escape U.S. Capitol Bombing Pentagon Bombing Prairie Fire Manifesto State Department Bombing Surrenders & Decline
SURRENDERS & DECLINE
Surrenders & Decline

In the late 1970s the Weather Underground disintegrated amid the end of the Vietnam War, internal splits over strategy (the "Hard Times" conflict), and the collapse of the movement around it. Beginning in 1977 and continuing into the 1980s, many members surfaced and turned themselves in.

Most faced surprisingly light consequences or saw charges dropped, because the government's case had been built on illegal surveillance, break-ins, and wiretaps carried out under the FBI's COINTELPRO program — abuses that were themselves later exposed and prosecuted. A few members, however, continued into other clandestine formations and were later imprisoned for actions such as the 1981 Brink's robbery.