University Review, no. 28, April 1973
New Left
University Review was ;published was published by Entelechy Press in New York City. “Entelechy” is a term coined by Aristotle that has come to mean a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. According to the magazine front-matter, "UR. Universal Ragout. Ultimate Repast. Worldly in taste, stellar in ingredients, intergalactic in appeal... Food for thought. Month after month. Whet your appetite." This issue includes letters to the editor; an editorial on Allen Ginsburg, Pete Seeger and Groucho Marx; Weather Underground Communique #13; film review of Charlotte’s Web; an interview with Bernardo Bertolucci; Bobby Seale’s mayoral campaign; women in prison;
Food fads; a music review of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bob Marley and the Wailers, David Bromberg, the Moody Blues and a set of new blues records; book reviews about drugs, Our Bodies, Ourselves, Vietnam and several books about film.
University Review
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Nixon Inaugural Action
(1 image)
1968 Election
Roz Payne took this photo while in Washington, D.C., for a protest of Richard Nixon's inauguration in 1968.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Chicago Election Day 1968
(1 image)
Black Power
A photo of a group of unidentified African Americans on Election Day in Chicago in 1968.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Mainstreet Congress
electoral politics
This button of unknown origin features the upraised fist, a popular symbol during the late-1960s and early-1970s connoting "power to the people."
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970s
button
No More Bullshit
Electoral Politics
In 1969, at the prompting of feminist leader, Gloria Steinam, author, cultural critic and activist, Norman Mailer, made an outsider bid for mayor of New York City. His campaign ran as a ticket with Jimmy Breslin, the raucous New York Daily News journalist who was seeking to become the President of the New York City Council. At the time, New York was facing a growing list of problems, including rising crime rates, increasing poverty and deindustrialization, middle-class suburban flight, congestion, pollution and political stagnation. In response, Mailer, whose campaign slogans were “No More Bullshit” and “Throw the Rascals In,” set out an outlandishly bold set of initiatives. His primary proposal was the “51st State” plan, a scheme whereby the five boroughs of New York would secede from the rest of the state in a bid to secure more independence, greater political representation, resources and power. Once independent, Mailer envisioned a radically decentralized political order with the city “splintering into townships and neighborhoods, with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies." In addition, he advocated a ban on private cars in Manhattan, replacing them with cabs and a monorail system that would circle the island; a citywide free bicycle rental program; and policies that would eliminate pollution, reduce taxes, and establish full autonomy for public schools. According to campaign literature, at the collegiate level, the campaign promoted “vest-pocket campuses built by students in abandoned buildings” that would restore “a sense of personal involvement that is lost in the large university campuses.” In perhaps his most utopian proposal, Mailer urged the creation of “Sweet Sundays,” which would mandate, once a month, that all mechanical transportation stop and elevators close down so that New Yorkers could decompress from their hectic urban lives and avoid breathing exhaust fumes.
Campaign events were often chaotic. At one, Mailer quipped, "The difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm no good and I can prove it." At another, he called his own supporters “spoiled pigs.” After learning that bars would be closed on election day, Jimmy Breslin complained, “I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed.”
Many New Left activists and libertarians supported the Mailer-Breslin ticket. The Black Panther Party also endorsed the duo after they backed the release of Panther leader, Huey Newton. To some, the campaign was a lark, to other a serious challenge to the established order, and to others an outright offense.
In the end, Mailer finished in fourth place during the Democratic mayoral primary, edging out state Assemblyman, Charles B. Rangel, who would go on to be elected to Congress in 1970 and remain in office until 2017. Even in defeat, though, Mailer’s campaign was seen by many leftists and libertarians as an important attempt to move from the realm of ideas into programmatic politics.
________________
Norman Mailer first gained fame in 1948 with the publication of his now-classic war novel, The Naked and the Dead, which was based in part on his own WWII experiences. In 1955, he was a part of a small group that established The Village Voice, an influential alternative newspaper located in Greenwich Village, which continued publication until 2018. Also an influential essayist, Mailer published “The White Negro” in Dissent in 1957, a controversial analysis of the “hipster” in post-war American culture.
Mailer became a ubiquitous cultural figure in the 1960s. In 1960, he published "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," an essay in Esquire on the rise of John F. Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention. He continued to see JFK as an “existential hero” for a new era. That same year, Mailer was convicted of assault for the stabbing of his wife, Adele, and served three years of probation. Mailer was also one of 29 prominent Americans who co-founded the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed the hardline anti-Castro stance of U.S. politicians and military leaders during the early-1960s. The group achieved widespread infamy in 1963, when it became public news that Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a member. In 1967, Mailer made a mark with the best-selling political book, Why Are We in Vietnam? and played an ongoing role in the anti-war movement, including signing the 1968 “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest,” a pledge to withhold tax payments to the U.S. government as opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Again that year, Mailer covered the turbulent Democratic and Republican National Conventions, work that he later published as, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968). In that book, Mailer portrays American politics cynically as a crass and self-interested exchange of political power. Reflecting back later on the party politics of the 1960s-era, Mailer wrote, "If you played for a team, you did your best to play very well, but there was something obscene… with starting to think there was more moral worth to Michigan than Ohio State." To Mailer, there was little difference between the disgraced Richard Nixon who left the White House after the Watergate scandal and Lyndon Johnson, whose liberal Great Society was derailed by the failed Vietnam war. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Mailer is also seen as a pioneer in what came to be known as the “New Journalism,” a form of creative nonfiction that used some of the style and devices of literary fiction to write fact-based journalism. His most significant work in this vein was Armies of the Night (1968), a nonfiction novel about the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. The book won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Mailer also wrote books about the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, a response to criticisms of him and other male authors by feminist author, Kate Millett, and an account of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,” the heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Forman in Zaire.
In 1979, Mailer published The Executioner’s Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize. The “true crime” novel focuses on the execution of Utah murderer, Gary Gilmore. His final novel, Harlot’s Ghost, published in 1991, explored the hidden history of the CIA from the end of WWII through the mid-1960s. Mailer, who also wrote drama and screenplays for films, died in 2007.
_____________________
Jimmy Breslin was an outspoken journalist and novelist who was known as a tough-talking representative of working-class residents in his hometown, Queens, New York. In 1962, Breslin wrote a best-selling book on the New York Mets baseball team, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? In 1963, he was covering southern civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. While other journalists wrote stories about the fallen president, Breslin secured an interview with Malcolm Perry, the Parkland Hospital doctor who had tried to save him. He followed that up with a powerful column about Clifton Pollard, the man who dug Kennedy’s grave. As journalist David Shedden later wrote, “It’s a plainly told story -- no breathtaking sentences here -- but the style is effective in its Hemingway-esque directness. Breslin moves from the gravedigger’s perspective, to a more omniscient view of the funeral, back to the worker. We like the passage about Jackie Kennedy, its moving description of her particular, telling gestures. But the piece’s central power lies in Breslin’s juxtaposition of the cemetery workers, the small details of the scene’s sounds and sights, with the enormity of the event." From there, Breslin secured positions as a columnist for a succession of New York newspapers, gaining a reputation as a staunch opponent of corruption and injustice. Like Mailer, Breslin was seen as a pioneer of the New Journalism movement and often mixed his own experience with his journalistic reportage of political events. In 1969, he published the true-crime book, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, about mobster “Crazy Joe” Gallo and his band of bungling baddies. The book was made into a film in 1971.
Breslin continued to be an influential writer until his death in 2017. In 1973, he wrote another novel, World Without End, Amen. In 1977, Breslin again gained notoriety for a series of compelling articles on the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killer, David Berkowitz. In response to those essays and in the midst of his killing spree, Berkowitz wrote to Breslin: “Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks.” The murderer continued, “J.B., I’m just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous .44 killings. I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and find it quite informative.” In 1978, Breslin received a sizable advance to co-write a book about the Son of Sam murders with Dick Schaap, titled, .44. Many viewed the book as exploitative and in poor taste so soon after the traumatic events. In 1986, Breslin won a Pulitzer Prize, in part for his writing about the AIDS epidemic in New York City, as well his broader work championing the causes of ordinary people. In later decades, he published a memoir, I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me (1996), as well as a non-fiction account of a Mexican construction worker in New York who was killed on site when a building collapsed, The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez (2002), and a final book about the mafia, titled, The Good Rat (2008). Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith described Breslin, "like an Irish wind that has blown through Queens and Harlem and Mutchie's bar. It is a pound of Hemingway and a pound of Joyce and 240 pounds of Breslin." Following his death in 2017, Tom Wolfe called him, “incredible, the greatest newspaper columnist of my era.”
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
button
Washington, D.C., Protest 1968
(52 images)
Electoral Politics
These images, taken by Roz Payne in 1968, may have been from protests that surrounded the inauguration of Richard Nixon, though it is unclear.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
After the 1968 Chicago Convention at the County Fair (45 images)
New Left
Photographs of activists at the County Fair following the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. It is unclear which county, as the Cook County Fair appears to have stopped in 1948.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
August 1968
New Left Notes, vol. 1, no. 36, September 23, 1966
New Left
New Left Notes was the official newspaper published by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This issue includes articles about anti-draft organizing; the Clear Lake National Convention; financing a movement; SDS at University of Kentucky; National Council Resolutions; National Secretary’s Report; paranoid politics; SDS and electoral politics; merger of National Farm Worker’s Union and AFL-CIO; Radical Education Project (REP) report; Student Un-American Activities Committee at San Jose State College; Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy; JOIN Community Union; literature list; letters to the editor.
Students for a Democratic Society
Bruce Pech
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
September 23, 1966
underground press
New Left Notes, vol. 1, no. 45, November 25, 1966
New Left
New Left Notes was the official newspaper published by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This issue includes articles about electoral politics in 1966; LBJ and Vietnam; referendum on the draft exam at the University of Buffalo; practical politics; Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet”; alienation or participation and participatory democracy; North American Congress on Latin America; shoppers boycott; a report from Canada; telephone tax boycott; a review of the play “MacBird”; missing girl advertisement.
Students for a Democratic Society
Bruce Pech
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
November 25, 1966
underground press
Yippie, Miami 1972
Counterculture and Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster promoted Yippie protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1972, the last time both major parties held their presidential conventions in the same city. Notably, these protests also included a break-away group from the original Yippies, led by Tom Forcade and called the "Zippies," for "Zeitgeist International Party." Contingents at the demonstrations also included the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and a large group of women’s liberation activists.
At the Republican Convention, about 3,000 anti-war activists, many wearing painted death masks and some splattered with red paint, confronted delegates, chanting, cursing, jostling and pounding on cars. Protesters aimed to force well-dressed delegates to walk through a "gauntlet of shame" as they approached the guarded gates of the convention. Protesters yelled, “Murderers, murderers” and "delegates kill!" Some protesters also broke windows along the main thoroughfare in Miami Beach during the protests, resulting in 212 arrests. Black Panther Party leader, Bobby Seale, who had recently been released from four years in jail as a result of his participation in the 1968 demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago, participated in the protests and at one point led demonstrators in chanting, “One, two, three, four. We don't want your f---ing war.” Daniel Ellsberg, who was facing criminal prosecution for releasing the Pentagon Papers, spoke to a more subdued crowd of anti-war demonstrators outside the convention center as Nixon was being nominated inside. Vietnam war veteran turned anti-war activist, Ron Kovic, also participated in the protests at the Republican National Convention.
The Democratic Convention also saw a variety of protests, inside the conventional hall and outside of it. Inside, previously excluded political activists clashed with traditional party leaders and activists in sessions that often extended late into the night. Outside, anti-war, black freedom, feminist, gay rights and other activists rallied and demonstrated. Anti-poverty advocates constructed "Resurrection City II," named after "Resurrection City," which had been constructed in Washington, D.C. in 1968 as a part of the Poor People's Campaign. "Gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, chronicled the 1972 Democratic Convention in his book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Youth International Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
poster
"On to November..."
Black Power
This wall poster was created by unknown black power advocates and describes organizing efforts around the election of 1968, including organizing efforts in Chicago, a boycott by high school students on election day in New York, as well as prison organizing.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Crime in the Streets
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This wall poster was created in the lead-up to the November 1968 presidential election, in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations in Chicago. The poster details police repression against demonstrators, an upcoming boycott by high school students on election day, as well as National G.I. Week, which also coincided with the election.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Roz Payne, Sheriff
(1 image)
Roz Payne
Roz Payne was put forth for a few different local offices in Vermont including sheriff.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
photograph
Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1981, Bernie Sanders successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
Bernie 1981
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
See You in Chicago
New Left
This button, which reads “See You in Chicago - Aug.’68” on an orange field, advertises planned protests by anti-war and civil rights activists at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The protests degenerated into a police riot when Democratic mayor and party stalwart, Richard Daley, ordered an estimated 23,000 riot-clad police officers to attack roughly 10,000 demonstrators in and near Grant Park. The chaos outside of the convention hall, which was broadcast across the country and around the world, took place against the backdrop of growing public opposition to America’s War in Vietnam, the blossoming of the anti-war movement, increasing disillusionment with the Democratic Party and what many viewed as the slow rate of meaningful social change, as well as the shocking assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, earlier that year. The tumultuous convention resulted in the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey and Edmund S. Muskie as his running-mate. Republican standard-bearer, Richard Nixon, won the fall election, capping one of the more unlikely political comebacks in recent U.S. history.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
Vote Green
Environmentalism
The environmental movement came of age in the 1970s and 1980s. Environmentalism initially emerged out of a myriad of local grassroots actions and organizations. Over time, some "Green" activists moved into electoral politics. This button was created by the national Green Party of the United States in the mid-1980s. In addition to environmentalism, the Green Party also advocated economic justice, racial equality and women's liberation.
Green Party of the United States
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1984
Button
Physical Object
As Goes Burlington So Goes France
Electoral Politics
Drawing from a Doonesbury comic by Gary Trudeau, this button includes the phrase, “As goes Burlington, so goes France” as a parody of the U.S political saying dating from the nineteenth-century, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” As a member of the Liberty Union Party, Bernie Sanders’ successful 1981 mayoral election in Burlington, Vermont, represented the state’s liberal-left position, in contrast with the emergence of the New Right at the same time.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
Bernie ’86
Electoral Politics
Bernie Sanders, an Independent from the state of Vermont, ran as the third party candidate in the state's 1986 gubernatorial race between Democratic candidate Madeleine Kunin and Republican candidate Lieutenant Governor Peter Smith. Sanders lost the race; however, he remained as the Mayor of Burlington until 1989 when he was elected in 1990 to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2006, Sanders won election to the U.S. Senate from Vermont, where he still serves. In 2016, Sanders shook up the Democratic presidential nominating process by giving the heavy favorite, Hillary Clinton, a strong challenge before ultimately losing the contest.
Bernie 1986
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1986
Button
Physical Object
Bernie for Burlington
In 1981, Bernie Sander successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
Bernie 1981
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
en-US
Physical Object
Bernie ’88
Electoral Politics
In 1988, Independent Burlington, Vermont, Mayor, Bernie Sanders, ran against Republican, Peter Smith, and Democrat, Paul Poirier, for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sanders lost to Smith by four percentage points in 1988, but came back to defeat Smith by sixteen points in 1990. Sanders held the House seat until 2006, when he moved on to the U.S. Senate.
Bernie 1988
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1988
Button
Physical Object
Bernie ’94
Electoral Politics
A campaign button from Bernie Sanders' successful 1994 re-election campaign to the House of Representatives as an Independent from Vermont.
Bernie 1994
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1994
Button
Physical Object
Belaunde is Coming
International Politics
Fernando Belaunde Terry was a two-time president of Peru, from 1963-68 and then again from 1980-1985. Rising to power initially in the 1960s as a liberal/left reformer, Belaúnde mixed a traditional indigenous Inca emphasis on community and cooperation with a social democratic economic orientation. During his administration, the Peruvian government initiated a number of important internal development projects, including a highway system connecting the South with the more remote northern region; several irrigation and hydro-electric projects; public housing in cities; formal legal recognition for numerous indigenous groups; expanded hospital network into uncovered areas; and increased social security coverage. Belaúnde was deposed by a military coup in 1968 and forced into exile in the U.S. In 1980, the military junta agreed to allow national elections, which were won by Belaúnde. He served again as President of the country from 1980 to 1985. Under Belaunde’s administration, Peru reinstituted constitutional rule and freedom of the press. Over time, Peru’s domestic economic troubles and foreign debt led to a decrease in Belaunde’s popularity.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
Button
Physical Object
Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1981, Bernie Sander successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
Bernie 1981
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
Roslyn Payne for Assistant Judge
Electoral Politics
Over the years, since moving to Vermont, Roz Payne has run for, and occasionally been elected to, a local public office or authority, like the time she became sheriff, but that is a whole other story...
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
Button
Physical Object
Ronald Reagan for Fuehrer
Electoral Politics
As a Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan ran and won the governorship of California in 1967 and 1971, targeting the politics of welfare and the student protest movement at the University of California at Berkeley. For many New Left activists, Reagan came to symbolize the repressive status quo.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1960s
Button
Physical Object
Re-Elect the Dike Bomber???
Anti-Vietnam War Movement and Electoral Politics
Throughout the U.S. war in Vietnam, policy-makers debated whether to bomb the system of dikes in North Vietnam as a way to drive the Hanoi government to the peace table. In 1965 and 1966, American military and political leaders rejected the idea, but it was revived again during the early 1970s by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Nixon Administration. The bombing of North Vietnamese dikes became a powerful propaganda tool for the North Vietnamese government seeking global sympathy in its war with the U.S., as well as among anti-war activists in America. This button, created during the 1972 election season, plays on this controversy.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
Button
Physical Object
Strike 3
Electoral Politics
This button addresses New Left dissatisfaction with all three of the major presidential candidates in the 1968 election, Richard Nixon (Republican), Huber Humphrey (Democrat), and George C. Wallace (American Independent). Public disillusionment with the political process, the Vietnam War, and domestic social policies reigned throughout the late-1960s. In the end, Nixon and the GOP won the election, ushering in a new era of conservative politics, leaving many on the American political Left to continue to debate the best path for change, inside or outside "the system."
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
Bradley for Mayor
Electoral Politics
Tom Bradley was a former police officer elected as Los Angeles’s first African American mayor in 1973. He served in office until 1993, including the 1992 race rebellion that occurred following the acquittal of police officers that brutally beat black motorist, Rodney King. Bradley is the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history. He ran unsuccessfully for California governor in 1982 and 1986. The racial politics during the 1982 campaign, in which many expected Bradley to win, led to the coining of the term, “Bradley Effect” to describe the discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in campaigns featuring a black candidate against a white opponent.
Bradley 1973
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1973
Button
Physical Object
Humphrey
Electoral Politics
Following President Lyndon B. Johnson's surprising decision to not seek re-election in 1968, his Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, ultimately earned the nomination Hindered by his connections to LBJ's policy in Vietnam, as well as a deeply divided Democratic Party, Humphrey lost the November election to Republican candidate, Richard Nixon.
Humphrey campaign
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
McCarthy
Electoral Politics
Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota Senator, ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1968 as an anti-war candidate. His campaign inspired a number of young people who opposed the war and who had become disaffected with government. Some even cut their long hair, mustaches and sideburns to go "Clean for Gene" while campaigning. McCarthy’s surprising success in early primaries played a role in Lyndon Johnson’s decision to drop out of the race in March and Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to jump into the race. Ultimately, McCarthy lost the Democratic nomination that year to Hubert Humphrey.
McCarthy campaign
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1967 or 1968
Button
Physical Object
ca. 1968
Impeach Lindsay
Electoral Politics
John Lindsay was the liberal Republican mayor of New York City from 1966-1973. During the late-1960s, following labor and racial unrest, as well as his mishandling of a winter blizzard, Lindsay received a backlash from white conservatives who opposed his civil rights advocacy and campaign for increased low-income housing. Lindsay’s socially liberal platform challenged the growing conservativism of Nixonian Republicanism.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Button
Physical Object
Stevenson for President
Electoral Politics
Adlai Stevenson was a lawyer, politician and diplomat known for his intellectualism, eloquent speaking and advocacy of progressive causes within the Democratic Party. Stevenson was the Democratic nominee for President against Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, losing both times. In 1960, he entered the Democratic primary for President again, but lost to John F. Kennedy, who ultimately defeated Richard Nixon in the general election. Kennedy appointed Stevenson to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where he served until his death in 1965.
Stevenson 1960
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1960
Button
Physical Object
No Reagan
Electoral Politics
In 1966, Ronald Reagan ran successfully as the Governor of California on the Republican ticket. Reagan’s governorship between the years 1967 to 1975 was met with reaction from student protesters, specifically addressing Regan’s anti-civil rights stance and his campaign against Berkeley’s free speech and antiwar student protesters. In 1976, Reagan ran unsuccessfully for the Republic presidential nomination, but was successful in 1980 and 1984, serving two terms as President. As a politician, Reagan positioned his new conservatism as a reaction against 1960s liberalism. He remained a controversial, polarizing political figure throughout his career.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
Button
Physical Object
March on Democratic Convention
Electoral Politics
In August 1980, the Coalition For A People’s Alternative organized a march on the Democratic National Convention in New York City, addressing police brutality, gay liberation, and antiracism.
Coalition For A People’s Alternative
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1980
Button
Physical Object
Bradley
Electoral Politics
Tom Bradley was a former police officer elected as Los Angeles’s first African American mayor in 1973. He served in office until 1993, including the 1992 race rebellion that occurred following the acquittal of police officers that brutally beat black motorist, Rodney King. Bradley is the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history. He ran unsuccessfully for California governor in 1982 and 1986. The racial politics during the 1982 campaign, in which many expected Bradley to win, led to the coining of the term, “Bradley Effect” to describe the discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in campaigns featuring a black candidate against a white opponent.
Bradley 1973
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1973
Button
Physical Object
Fulbright for President
Electoral Politics
J. William Fulbright was a Democratic Senator from Arkansas from 1945 until his resignation in 1974 and the longest serving Chair off the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Fulbright was a multilateralist who advocated for the creation of the United Nations and opposed McCarthyism and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Yet, he was also a segregationist and signed a revised version of the “Southern Manifesto,” a political document opposing the Brown v. Board of Education decision. He also participated in the Senate filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act, though he voted for a 5-year extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1970. He also played a leading role in opposing Richard Nixon’s attempts to appoint southern conservatives, Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell, to the Supreme Court, both of whom were seen as hostile to labor and civil rights. As Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright was politically positioned to play an important role in the evolving U.S. policy in Vietnam. While he initially sponsored and voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon Johnson broad and unlimited power to escalate war in Vietnam, Fulbright later became an ardent critic of American policy there. In his 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright attacked the justification of the Vietnam War, Congress's failure to set limits on it, and the impulses which gave rise to it. Fulbright’s criticisms severely undermined the elite consensus on the war and won him growing support among the anti-war movement. In 1968, prior to Lyndon B. Johnson’s withdrawal from reelection, antiwar activists pressed alternative candidates for president, among them a Robert F. Kennedy-Fulbright ticket.
Citizens for Kennedy-Fulbright
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1967- 68
Button
Physical Object
LBJ Hat
Electoral Politics
In the shape of a cowboy hat representative of his native Texas, this button commemorates Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1964
Button
Physical Object
LBJ - For the USA
Electoral Politics
This button represents Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 campaign for president on the Democratic ticket. The button was made by Vari-Vue from Pictorial Productions, Inc. Vari-Vue specialized in "printed and pictorial signs and displays containing at least two images which are separately visible when viewed through a screen upon relative movement of the screen or line of vision."
Vari-Vue from Pictorial Productions, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1964
Button
Physical Object
Johnson-Humphrey/Vote Democratic
Electoral Politics
This button promotes the Democratic Presidential ticket in 1964.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1964
button
Oppose This Pro-War Ticket November Fifth 1968
Electoral Politics
This button features the caricatures of George C. Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, and Richard Nixon, the major presidential candidates in the 1968 election. It signifies the growing disillusionment among many New Left activists regarding traditional electoral politics and the major political parties. In 1968, many New Left and anti-war voters sat out the election, causing some to charge that they delivered the election to Nixon over Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey.
For more context on this election, see:
https://library.duke.edu/exhibits/sevenelections/elections/1968/issues.html
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
Button
Physical Object
Unpaid Precinct Worker: I Read the Liberal Democrat
Electoral Politics
Liberal Democratic button. A precinct worker is a party loyalist who works for a political party at the local, or grassroots, level organizing and rallying voters to support that party.
Democratic Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
Button
Physical Object
Bernie Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1983, Bernie Sanders ran for re-election as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, running as an Independent, narrowly won the mayor's office in 1981 by a margin of ten votes over his Democratic opponent, but won the 1983 election by a more comfortable margin, earning 52% of the vote, compared to 30% for his closest competitor. Sanders served three terms as Mayor of Burlington before moving on to the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years (1990-2005) and then the U.S. Senate in 2006, where he continues to serve. Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving Independent in U.S. congressional history. In 2016, Sanders mounted an insurgent campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, narrowly losing to Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose in the general election to Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders for Mayor
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1983
Poster
en-US
Physical Object
Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1983, Bernie Sanders ran for re-election as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, running as an Independent, narrowly won the mayor's office in 1981 by a margin of ten votes over his Democratic opponent, but won the 1983 election by a more comfortable margin, earning 52% of the vote, compared to 30% for his closest competitor. Sanders served three terms as Mayor of Burlington before moving on to the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years (1990-2005) and then the U.S. Senate in 2006, where he continues to serve. Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving Independent in U.S. congressional history. In 2016, Sanders mounted an insurgent campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, narrowly losing to Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose in the general election to Donald Trump.
Sanders for Mayor Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1983
poster
Grand Slam for Burlington
electoral politics
Bernie Sanders was first elected Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, by ten votes. He subsequently won re-election in 1983, 1985 and 1987 before moving on to the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate. This poster was created for his 1987 re-election campaign, which he won 56% to 44% over Paul Lafayette.
Sanders for Mayor Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1987
Bernie Benefit
Electoral Politics
This poster promotes a benefit event for Bernie Sanders' re-election campaign featuring an art auction and performance dances.
artists for Sanders
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1980s
poster
Burlington is Not for Sale
Electoral Politics
In 1981, Bernie Sanders successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
poster
Ten Days to Change the World
Yippies/Counterculture
This poster promoted Yippie protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1972, the last time both major parties held their presidential conventions in the same city. Notably, these protests also included a break-away group from the original Yippies, led by Tom Forcade and called the "Zippies," for "Zeitgeist International Party." Contingents at the demonstrations also included the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and a large group of women’s liberation activists.
At the Republican Convention, about 3,000 anti-war activists, many wearing painted death masks and some splattered with red paint, confronted delegates, chanting, cursing, jostling and pounding on cars. Protesters aimed to force well-dressed delegates to walk through a "gauntlet of shame" as they approached the guarded gates of the convention. Protesters yelled, “Murderers, murderers” and "delegates kill!" Some protesters also broke windows along the main thoroughfare in Miami Beach during the protests, resulting in 212 arrests. Black Panther Party leader, Bobby Seale, who had recently been released from four years in jail as a result of his participation in the 1968 demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago, participated in the protests and at one point led demonstrators in chanting, “One, two, three, four. We don't want your f---ing war.” Daniel Ellsberg, who was facing criminal prosecution for releasing the Pentagon Papers, spoke to a more subdued crowd of anti-war demonstrators outside the convention center as Nixon was being nominated inside. Vietnam war veteran turned anti-war activist, Ron Kovic, also participated in the protests at the Republican National Convention.
The Democratic Convention also saw a variety of protests, inside the conventional hall and outside of it. Inside, previously excluded political activists clashed with traditional party leaders and activists in sessions that often extended late into the night. Outside, anti-war, black freedom, feminist, gay rights and other activists rallied and demonstrated. Anti-poverty advocates constructed "Resurrection City II," named after "Resurrection City," which had been constructed in Washington, D.C. in 1968 as a part of the Poor People's Campaign. "Gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, chronicled the 1972 Democratic Convention in his book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1972
poster