Eric Weinberger, longtime social justice activist; 74

Speaking in 1962 to a panel led by Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights activist Eric Weinberger described what police did after he was arrested in Tennessee earlier that year while helping sharecroppers make and sell leather tote bags.

"My fingers were bent back, my pants slashed or torn off, and a high-voltage electric probe applied," he said, according to a United Press International report on the meeting in Washington, D.C. "During the beating I passed out two or three times, but was revived each time by slaps so that the torture could continue."

Forty years later he was serving free meals on Boston Common for the Food Not Bombs movement. By then his arrest record for civil disobedience had traced an arc from the civil rights movement to Vietnam War protests, antinuclear demonstrations, and advocacy for the poor and hungry.

Mr. Weinberger, who served meals on Boston Common nearly every Friday for more than 15 years, died Dec. 15 at the Goddard House care facility in Jamaica Plain.

He was 74 and until two days earlier had lived nearby with much younger activists who in tribute to his unwavering commitment to social justice cared for him as he slowly succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.

In his late 20s, Mr. Weinberger had chosen a life of nonviolent activism.

By example, he inspired generations of protesters from Mississippi to Boston.

"Once he decided that was the path to take, he stuck with it throughout his entire life," said Mark Pelletier of Jamaica Plain, an activist in whose house Mr. Weinberger had lived. "The history books are full of people who did amazing things for 10, 15 years, and then ended up doing something else. Eric persisted and truly, deeply believed in the power of nonviolence for changing society."

Precociously intelligent as a child, Mr. Weinberger's IQ was tested at 157, said his brother Tony of Chester, Vt. Their father was a lawyer who handled early civil rights cases. Future US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was an occasional dinner guest at the family's home in Great Neck, N.Y.

At 15, Mr. Weinberger was chosen to attend an elite program at the University of Chicago. On campus, he found himself an adolescent uncomfortable among returning World War II veterans in their mid-20s. Two years later he dropped out.

Catching rides around the country, he worked in various jobs, then went to Asheville, N.C., to attend Black Mountain College, an alternative institution that attracted creative minds such as composer John Cage and poet Robert Creeley. When the college closed in 1957, he acted for a time in San Francisco, then returned East and lived in Connecticut.

A chance encounter with a nonviolent activists in 1960 set him on the road to Tennessee and the civil rights movement. In 1963 Mr. Weinberger, already a veteran of police beatings, fasted 32 days in an Alabama jail cell after being arrested during a freedom march.

"I came out on the other end almost dead," he told Shawn Sitaro in an interview posted on the Internet. "Once you get past the first three days or so, when you're hungry there's a spare tank. . . . You throw the switch, or the switch throws itself, and you switch over to supplying yourself from the reserve tank, and you can go for a month. You get past a month, and you're empty on both tanks."

Last November, a few weeks before Mr. Weinberger died, his brother Michael was in New York City at a Morgan Library exhibit that included items from the 1960s and came upon a fund-raising letter from the Congress of Racial Equality. The civil rights organization had used a photo of a skeletal Mr. Weinberger and told the story of his arrest and fast.

"It was for me just a shocking experience to all of a sudden look down and see the picture of him in his emaciated form," said his brother, who lives in Hartland, Vt. "When he was released, he looked like an Auschwitz survivor."

In another incident, a police officer poured the substance from a tear gas bomb into Mr. Weinberger's face.

"When I saw him after he came back, there were no whites in his eyes," Tony said. "I'm surprised he wasn't blinded."

After leaving the South, and the civil rights movement, he took part in antiwar demonstrations in New York City. Later, he moved to Boston and protested against the Seabrook nuclear power plant and got involved with Food Not Bombs. Because of his intelligence and ability to reason with others, he often negotiated with police to secure permits for protests.

Except when he was supporting a family, Mr. Weinberger was renowned for his frugality and chose to live simply in apartments and houses he shared with others.

"The man could live on a dollar a day, and he felt guilty about taking that much," Tony said of his brother's life during the civil rights era.

In Boston, while volunteering for more than 15 years with Food Not Bombs, Mr. Weinberger was modest in the presence of young activists, never calling attention to himself.

"I think Eric would be pleased at the number of people who had a deep amount of respect for him and really learned from his example," Pelletier said.

And when Mr. Weinberger spoke, Pelletier said, "his vocabulary and knowledge were so expansive that . . . his answers would always be laced with these wonderful poetic metaphors."

Mr. Weinberger kept the Alzheimer's diagnosis to himself until the symptoms were apparent. Then his activist friends came to their mentor's assistance.

"Here was someone who had given a great deal of himself," Michael said, "and it was returned in extraordinary ways."

A memorial service will be held today at 1 p.m. in the Community Church of Boston on Boylston Street.