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https://rozsixties.unl.edu/files/original/f6d27ec06b8672326bf14347868f5d9f.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buttons
Description
An account of the resource
Buttons were one of the most popular and pervasive forms of political messaging during the 1960s, combining brief messaging and memorable graphic designs. Buttons were inexpensive to produce on a mass basis and easy to distribute. They afforded any individual an opportunity to voice their opinions and, potentially, reach a broad audience. As Hunter Oatman-Stanford has written, “From discreet lapel pins to oversized buttons on purses or backpacks, pinbacks invite conversation by declaring potentially controversial viewpoints to complete strangers.” In this way, buttons were (and still are) a particularly democratic form of political propaganda.
As button collector, John Aisthorpe, has put it, buttons offer “a little snapshot of history.” During the 1960s, buttons were vital to the visual identity of a range of movements. “There were many protest groups who put their views on buttons,” Aisthorpe recalls, “from the early ’60s with the Free Speech Movement (FSM) to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, later, the Veterans for Peace, the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, and the Yippies.” The political impact of buttons in the 1960s is hard to gauge, though their popularity suggests some modicum of significance. And, as Aisthorpe has asserted, “It’s hard to say what impact they had, but the text of buttons worn at protests were often used as antiwar chants, like ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’… They must have had some effect.” The buttons of the 1960s have remained some of the most enduring relics from this important past.
This collection includes buttons from a wide array of movements from the Sixties, including the student movement, civil rights and Black Power movements, women's liberation, environmentalism, the anti-nuclear movement, gay liberation, electoral politics, the Chicano movement, the labor movement and the counterculture, with a strong emphasis on the anti-war movement. In addition, a few buttons date from Roz Payne’s activist efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, including the early political campaigns of Vermont politician, Bernie Sanders.
Physical Object
An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Stop Racist Frame-Up Free Billy Smith
Description
An account of the resource
On March 15, 1971, a fragmentation grenade killed two white officers and injured another on the U.S. Army base near Bien Hoa, Vietnam. Private Billy Dean Smith, who was stationed at the base, was charged with the crime. Smith was an African American draftee born in Bakersfield, California, in 1948, the tenth of twelve children in his family. They lived in Texas for several years before moving to the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1957. Smith was staunchly critical of the War in Vietnam, citing the racialization of the draft and the “imperialist” motivations for the war. His case received considerable media attention in the U.S. and raised awareness of the racial injustice within the military legal system, bringing greater attention to what became known as “fragging.” According to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, “fragging” was the result of “an atmosphere that drives an American G.I. to kill his fellow G.I. or superior.. Fragging, I fear, is just an outgrowth of this mistaken, this tragic conflict.” Smith’s case also attracted the attention and support of a wide range of activists across the New Left, including Angela Davis and Fidel Castro. Castro called it “a new cause for the progressive movement and a new cause for international solidarity” and said, “A man became a criminal. A man who refused to destroy schools and hospitals and dikes, who devoted himself to refusing to kill Vietnamese people, who refused to kill women and children, to burn homes, to torture and commit all acts of this type. They are demanding his head and therefore there is now a new symbol: Billy Dean Smith.” In 1971, the Billy Dean Smith Defense Committee wrote, "This is an important case because of the wide array of issues it must, of its very nature, raise. For the first time in a long while, the case of Billy Dean Smith will put the built-in biases in the system of military justice -- and the Indochina war -- on trial. " In a letter published in Seize the Time, a newsletter by the Black Disciple Party, Smith wrote, "The Army is playing a very heavy game on me, and on all of the people at the same time. They are doing everything they can to keep my lawyers in place -- trying to keep information and evidence from them and to keep them from saying what has to be said. It is very clear that they will keep on trying to stop us from getting what we need for my defense." Ultimately, Smith was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder charges, though convicted of lesser charges stemming from the incident and given a bad conduct discharge.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Billy Dean Smith Defense Committee
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Button
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical Object
Subject
The topic of the resource
Anti-War Movement
Angela Davis
Anti-War
Billy Dean Smith
Billy Dean Smith Defense Committee
Black Disciples Party
Black Power
Fidel Castro
fragging
Mike Mansfield
New Left
Seize the Time
Vietnam War