By Ben Joravsky
During World War II he served on a coast guard transport ship, ferrying troops to war zones. “It was the most traumatic experience of his young life,” says Judith Sains, his widow. “He went all over the world and saw so much destruction, poverty, and death. These things stayed with Sam. They motivated him to do something special with his life.”
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After the war Sains earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from NYU, taught industrial arts in several New York high schools, and signed on with Xerox, which sent him to Chicago to organize a job training program for inner-city adults.
Within a few months the Tribune was having a field day, shocking readers with sensational accounts of tax dollars showered on hoodlums and ex-cons. The outrage reached Washington, where Senator John McClellan of Arkansas convened a congressional hearing. Sains flew to the capital but was never asked to testify. Instead, McClellan concentrated on lurid accounts of pot-smoking, gun-toting, gangbanging federal grantees. During one dramatic nationally televised exchange, Blackstone Ranger leader Jeff Fort walked out of the hearing room rather than answer McClellan’s questions. The program, never re-funded, is still remembered by right-wing ideologues as a classic case of liberalism run amok.
After the program ended, Sains moved to Massachusetts and set up the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical School, a widely lauded public institution. He returned to Chicago in the late 1970s to work for TWO; eventually he became a private consultant to dozens of not-for-profits, including the Chinese Mutual Aid Association.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Sam Sains photo by Bruce Powell.
