A document drafted during the height of the 1960s protest movement will be remembered in perpetuity with a new historical marker. Jim Soto chairs the Port Huron Statement Historical Marker committee and tells WPHM that this past week the group received permission from the Department of Natural Resources to place a state historical marker at Lakeport state park, the site of the signing of the document.
“The Port Huron Statement was the manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society, started in Ann Arbor in 1961,” said Soto. “The founding meeting was done at what is now Lakeport State Park, but in June of 1962 when they met, it was a UAW camp.”
Soto says the statement took the name of the next largest nearby city, Port Huron. The push to erect a historical marker came out of a lecture that SDS founder Thomas Hayden gave at SC4 in 2012. The Port Huron Statement Historical Marker committee raised over $3700 for the project with the Michigan Historical Commission providing an additional $430 to cover the remaining costs of the marker. It is expected to be placed in the day use area of the park sometime next summer.
