His father, who was a pharmacist, died when Lens was three years old, and he was raised by his single mother who worked long hours in the New York City garment industry.
[2] In 1967, he was among more than 500 writers and editors who signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay the 10% Vietnam War Tax surcharge proposed by president Johnson.
[3] Along with his 1977 book The Day Before Doomsday which warned of the dangers of nuclear war, Lens also wrote a history of U.S. intervention abroad, The Forging of the American Empire, originally published in 1974 and republished in 2003 by Haymarket Books with a new introduction by Howard Zinn; and an autobiography, Unrepentant Radical.
Lens married Chicago public school teacher and fellow progressive Shirley Rubin in 1946.
Other papers and books related to the legacy of Sidney Lens are also held at the CSUN University Library Special Collections and Archives.