"A Letter from Soledad Prison," by George Jackson
Prisoner's Rights Movement
George Jackson was imprisoned for armed robbery in 1961 and placed in San Quentin Prison before being transferred to Soledad Prison. While incarcerated, Jackson became radicalized and formed a Maoist-Marxist group, the Black Guerrilla Family. He was also a member of the Black Panther Party. In 1970, he and two other inmates were charged with the murder of prison guard, John Vincent Mills, following a fight. They became known as the Soledad Brothers and were seen by many radicals as political prisoners. Jackson was also an author and published the influential, "Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George L. Jackson." Jackson was killed by guards at San Quentin during an escape attempt in 1971. Many activists believed he was murdered as retaliation for his activism.
In this letter, George Jackson details conditions inside Soledad Prison, as well as the connection of prisoner's to the wider revolution for justice.
Committee to Defend the Panthers
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
mimeograph
letter
"Double Jeopardy," Frances Beale
Black Freedom Movement and Women's Liberation
This is an important pamphlet written by Frances Beale about the double-oppression of black women, as African Americans and women. Her analysis includes economic exploitation of black women and "bedroom politics."
Radical Education Project
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
pamphlet
"Gay Liberation: 15 articles, plus documents, poems, photos and drawings"
Gay Liberation
This pamphlet gathers together a variety of influential articles, poems and images from the early gay liberation movement, including, ""Gay is Good"; "The Woman Identified Woman"; "What's Wrong With Sucking?"; "Gay Consciousness"; "Born to Love"; "My Gay Soul"; "A Letter from Mary"; "Gay Liberation Meets the Shrinks"; "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements"; "statement by Third World Gay Revolution"; "Hey, man"; "From the Men: Games Male Chauvinists Play"; "A Gay Manifesto"; "Revolutionary Love"; "The Flaming Faggots"; "Phoenix of New Youth"; "Bring the Beautiful Boys Home";
Gay Flames
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. ear;y-1970s
pamphlet
"Getting Together: How to Start a Consciousness-Raising Group," by Marge Piercy and Jane Freeman
Women's Liberation
This pamphlet explains how to start and run a consciousness-raising group. It was written in 1972 by Marge Piercy and Jane Freeman for the Cape Cod Women's Liberation organization.
Cape Cod Women's Liberation
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
pamphlet
"Liberation of Women: Sexual Repression & the Family," Laurel Limpus
Women's Liberation/Sexual Liberation
This theoretical essay explores the links between women's liberation, sexuality and sexual repression. It was originally published in This Magazine is About Schools, a publication founded in 1966 in Toronto, Canada. While it initially focused on radical education, the magazine widened its focus to other issues over time.
published by New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
pamphlet
"Prisoners of War: The Case of the New York Three"
Black Panther Party and Prisoner's Rights Movement
On May 21, 1971, two New York police officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, were shot and killed in a Harlem housing project. The killings took place within the broader context of growing black militancy and governmental repression against the Black Panther Party. Initially, five men were arrested and charged with the crime, Anthony (Jalil Muntaqim) Bottom, Albert (Nuh) Washington, Herman Bell, Gabriel and Francisco Torres. Charges were later dismissed against the Torres brothers. Bell, Bottom and Washington were members of the the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army and all targets of FBI COINTELPRO operations. The Black Liberation Army was an underground wing of the Black Panther Party. The group's program was to wage war against the United States Government. Its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." Some believed the killings of the two police officers was retaliation for the killing of George Jackson during an attempted break-out from Attica Prison a few weeks earlier. Richard Nixon and other members of his administration, along with J. Edgar Hoover and other members of the FBI worked with New York Police in a special operation, called, "Newkill," to apprehend the perpetrators of these killings. The trial was controversial and included a number of questionable practices by local and federal law enforcement. All three were convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences. In 2012, Herman Bell admitted to the New York Parole Board that he played a part in the killings. He was released in April 2018. Washington died of cancer while still imprisoned in 2000. Bottom remains incarcerated.
This pamphlet, published by Friends of the New York Three, provides an overview of the case and broader context on COINTELPRO.
Friends of the New York Three
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1970s
pamphlet
"Problem Pregnancy Guide: By, For and About Women"
Women's Liberation
This pamphlet includes a collection of important articles and resources from the women's liberation movement on sexuality, masturbation, homosexuality, abortion, birth control and motherhood. It also includes a list of women's health resources in several northeastern states. This resource highlights the importance of women's health in second wave feminism.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
pamphlet
"The Blacks and the Unions," by Bayard Rustin
The Black Freedom Movement and Labor Movement
Bayard Rustin was a legendary black gay pacifist, socialist and civil rights activist. Rustin was a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the primary organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. In this pamphlet, Rustin details the complex and problematic history of African Americans and labor unions, but argues for black participation in the union movement, rather than allow business interests to use them as strike-breakers.
published by A. Philip Randolph Education Fund
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
pamphlet
"The Farmworker's Movement: A People's Fight Against Corporate Exploitation"
Farmworker's Movement
This issue of the Joint Strategy and Action Committee, Inc.'s newsletter, "Grapevine," attempts to pull together the farmworker's union "history, philosophy, tactics, program, church support."
Joint Strategy and Action Committee, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
January 1972
newsletter
"The Hidden History of the Female: The Early Feminist Movement in the United States," by Martha Atkins
Women's Liberation
This essay offers a historical analysis of the women's rights movement prior to the 1960s-era. It was originally published by Hogtown Press.
published by New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
pamphlet
"The Politics of Day Care," by Florika and Gilda
Women's Liberation
This pamphlet provides an economic critique of day care as a function of the tension between family and the demand for women's labor in the capitalist economy.
Florika and Gilda
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
This essay was initially self-published and also later published in Women: A Journal of Liberation (winter 1970): 31
pamphlet
"The Story of the Murder of Fred Hampton," John Kifner
Black Panther Party
Chairman of the Black Panther Party in Illinois, Fred Hampton was murdered on December 4, 1969 by Cook County police by the order of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Chicago police as he slept in his apartment. His death functioned as a catalyst for protests on police corruption and government oppression in the North. This article by John Kifner, reprinted from San Francisco-based magazine, Scanlon's, addresses biased media reporting on the death of Hampton and surveillance of him by state and federal authorities.
written by John Kifner, originally published in Scanlan and reprinted by Committee to Defend the Panthers
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
article
"Tierra-O Muerte: The Land Belongs to the People"
Chicano Movement
This pamphlet combines previous writings by Clark Knowlton and Frances Swadesh into one essay that explores the long land struggle in New Mexico that culminated in the 1967 Tierra Amarilla courthouse "raid." In addition, it explores tensions between La Raza and hippies, who were coming to New Mexico in larger numbers.
El Grito newspaper, re-published by Radical Education Project
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
pamphlet
"Toward a Female Liberation Movement," by Beverly Jones and Judith Brown
Women's Liberation
In this 1968 essay, sometimes referred to as the "Florida Paper," Beverly Jones and Judith Brown put forth a strong, even incendiary, critique of the "Women's Manifesto," which was created by the Women's Caucus at the 1967 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) convention. This document was originally published by the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC). In the 1970 Handbook of Women's Liberation. Marlene Dixon wrote, "That started it if anything written started it. That paper just laid it on the line."
Beverly Jones and Judith Brown, published by New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
pamphlet
"What is the Revolutionary Potential of Women's Liberation," by Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood
Women's Liberation
This influential essay puts forth an argument for women's liberation within the broader "revolutionary movement" of the late-1960s. The essay, which is re-published here by New England Free Press, was originally published under the title, "Bread and Roses," in the June 1969 issue of The Leviathan.
published by New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
pamphlet
"What is the Revolutionary Potential of Women's Liberation?" by Kathy McAfee and Myrna Wood
Women's Liberation
This essay, originally titled, "Bread and Roses," was first published in the June 1969 issue of Leviathan and reprinted here by the New England Free Press in 1970. The authors offer a critique of contemporary feminism and put forth a radical, liberationist form of socialist feminism. In their introduction, they write:
"A great deal of confusion exists today about the role of women's liberation in a revolutionary movement. Hundreds of women's groups have sprung up within the past year or two, but among them, a number of very different and often conflicting ideologies have developed. The growth of these movements has demonstrated the desperate need that many women feel to escape their own oppression, but it has also shown that organization around women's issues need not lead to revolutionary consciousness, or even to an identification with the left. (Some groups mobilize middle class women to fight for equal privileges as business women and academics; others maintain that the overthrow of capitalism is irrelevant for women.)
Many movement women have experienced the initial exhilaration of discovering women's liberation as an issue, of realizing that the frustration, anger, and fear we feel are not a result of individual failure but are shared by all our sisters, and of sensing -- if not fully understanding -- that these feelings stem from the same oppressive conditions that give rise to racism, chauvinism and the barbarity of American culture. But many movement women, too, have become disillusioned after a time by their experiences with women's liberation groups. More often than not these groups never get beyond the level of therapy sessions; rather than aiding the political development of women and building a revolutionary women's movement, they often encourage escape from political struggle.
The existence of this tendency among women's liberation groups is one reason why many movement activists (including some women) have come out against a women's liberation movement that distinguishes itself from the general movement, even if it considers itself part of the left. A movement organized by women around the oppression of women, they say, is bound to emphasize the bourgeois and personal aspects of oppression and to obscure the material oppression of working class women and men. At best, such a movement "lacks revolutionary potential" (Bernadine Dohrn, N.L.N., V.4, No.9). In SDS, where this attitude is very strong, questions about the oppression and liberation of women are raised only within the context of current SDS ideology and strategy; the question of women's liberation is raised only as an incidental, subordinate aspect of programs around "the primary struggle," anti-racism. (Although most people in SDS now understand the extent of black people's oppression, they are not aware of the fact that the median wage of working women, (black and white) is lower than that of black males.) The male domination of the organization has not been affected by occasional rhetorical attacks on male chauvinism and more important, very little organizing of women is being done.
Although the reason behind it can be understood, this attitude toward women's liberation is mistaken and dangerous. By discouraging the development of a revolutionary women's liberation movement, it avoids a serious challenge to what, along with racism, is the deepest source of division and false consciousness among workers. By setting up (in the name of Marxist class analysis) a dichotomy between the "bourgeois," personal and psychological forms of oppression on the one hand, and the "real" material forms on the other, it substitutes a mechanistic model of class relations for a more profound understanding of how these two aspects of oppression depend upon and reinforce each other. Finally, this anti-women's liberationist attitude makes it easier for us to bypass a confrontation of male chauvinism and the closely related values of elitism and authoritarianism which are weakening our movement. "
published in Leviathan
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
pamphlet
"Woman and Her Mind: The Story of Daily Life," by Meredith Tax
Women's Liberation
On her website, Meredith Tax offers this description of her 1970 essay, as well as a contemporary reconsideration of some of its major points:
"This four part essay, my first major work in print, is often considered a founding document of the women’s liberation movement, as well as one of the first texts to discuss sexual harassment. It was published as a pamphlet by the New England Free Press in the spring of 1970. The first two sections were reprinted in Notes from the Second Year (1970), published by the New York Radical Feminists. The same sections were also reprinted widely in the underground press after being syndicated by Liberation News Service. The editors of Notes from the Second Year edited the text rather heavily. I have restored the original pamphlet text. The quotations from Sylvia Plath are from Ariel (1965).
In rereading the essay, I am struck by the following:
How strongly I was influenced by the existential psychology of R.D. Laing, which is now completely out of fashion.
How certain I was that I could draw any necessary theory from my own experience and that of my friends—this premise lead to a number of overconfident assertions but also gave our writing and thinking a freshness and immediacy that today’s academic feminist theory lacks.
How much the world has changed. I was in violent rebellion against a middleclass suburban world in which women were expected to stay home and perform their wifely duties rather than have a public life. That world never existed for everyone and it now hardly exists at all.
How clear and brave my voice was then. I had that in common with most of the women in my cohort at the time, for this was the voice of women’s liberation in its early days: impassioned, detailed, scathing in its criticisms, sometimes making unjustified generalizations, but never dull, academic, or abstract.
And what about the section on sex? Has women’s experience of sex changed and become freer? Certainly reliable birth control—for those who have it—has been enormously liberating—and the AIDS epidemic and rise of fundamentalist religion enormously confining. Was my point of view in 1970 too rigidly Marxist, not to mention white, straight, middle class, and unable even to imagine the enormous variations in human sexuality that have since become apparent? No question about it. But as far as relations go between men and women, I don’t see that the power relations I described in 1970 have fundamentally changed, despite the marketing of women’s pleasure, good clothes, and high heels represented by “Sex and the City”—which seems, rather, to exemplify what I said about women becoming objects of consumption even to themselves."
Bread and Roses and the New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
pamphlet
"Women: The Longest Revolution," by Juliet Mitchell
Women's Liberation
This essay offered a socialist analysis of "The Woman Question," drawing on Marxist feminism, psychoanalysis and literary criticism. As Christine Riddiough has noted, "Written just three years after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Mitchell’s work garnered nowhere near the notoriety of Friedan’s. It was, nonetheless, as important." This essay was originally published in the November/December 1966 issue of New Left Review.
published by New England Free Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1966
pamphlet
April 4
Civil Rights and Black Power
This button commemorates the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, and the militant awakening his murder inspired. In the immediate aftermath of King's killing, urban rebellions erupted in dozens of U.S. cities.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
Button
Physical Object
Armed Self-Defense
Black Power
This button depicts a red five-pointed star symbolizing Communism and a black silhouette of a gun within a black outline of a gun sight. This image represents the discussion of armed self-defense among some urban Black Nationalist leaders and organizations during the late-1960s and early-1970s. The iconography on this button draws strongly from other third world liberation struggles of the time period.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
Button
Physical Object
Every Woman’s Place
Women's Liberation
According to a brief history of Every Woman's Place,
"In February 1975, several women who were concerned about the unmet needs of women in our community met with representatives of the Department of Social Services and United Way. The women present ranged in age from 18 to 73 years of age. They included ADC recipients, middle and upper-middle income women, Black, Chicana, and White. They were women who worked at home and women employed away from home, married and single. They represented themselves as individuals and groups such as the League of Women Voters, Church Women United, National Organization for Women (NOW), Business & Professional Women, and the American Association of University Women.
The one single thing all had in common, besides the fact that they were women, was their knowledge of and concern for the problems which confront many women. In that first meeting, those problems began to be identified. The main identifiable problem areas were employment, assistance in crisis situations, assistance in knowing where to get the help and information they needed, and emergency child care.
The group unanimously decided that a center for women was needed to assist women with problems. The philosophy was and is to serve the unmet needs of every woman who needs assistance with emphasis placed on those women who are the least able to help themselves, the economically disadvantaged, minority women, women over 45, handicapped women and women with less than a high school diploma. Hence, the name, Every Woman’s Place came about."
In 1980, Every Woman’s Place, Inc. merged with Webster House forming a community resource for women, young adults, and children in economic and domestic crisis. In 1994, the group moved into a new building, which it paid off by 2007. Among the resources that continue to be available at the organization include mental health counseling, youth development workshops, educational resources, and support networks."
Every Woman’s Place, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
Frente Unido - Marcha a Washington de Octobre 30
Puerto Rican Nationalism
This leaflet encourages New Yorkers to participate in an upcoming march in Washington, D.C., to support Puerto Rican Nationalism, as well as "political prisoners" in the U.S. associated with the cause. The flyer features five imprisoned nationalists. Four - Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Rafael Cancel Miranda - had been imprisoned after entering the U.S. Capitol Building on March 1, 1954, and opening fire with automatic pistols, wounding five congressmen. The fifth, Oscar Collazo, attempted to assassinate President Harry S Truman on November 1, 1950. The 1950s were a time of insurgent Puerto Rican nationalism, with a variety of actions on the island and in the U.S. On October 30, 1950, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized a series of uprisings in various Puerto Rican cities. The date for the 1954 attack on the U.S. Capitol was chosen because it coincided with the inauguration of the Conferencia Interamericana (Interamerican Conference) in Caracas. The activists hoped to call attention to Puerto Rico's independence cause, particularly among the Latin American countries participating in that conference. During the late-1960s, Puerto Rican nationalism saw a resurgence along with other struggles for self-determination and liberation.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
mimeograph
leaflet
Gay Liberation button
Gay Liberation
Against a black field, this button shows two pink male astrological symbols side-by-side, symbolizing male homosexuality. This button represented the gay liberation movement and its mobilization in the post-Stonewall (1969) era. An important part of the emerging gay liberation movement was a heightened public profile for gays and lesbians, as well as various public expressions of gay pride.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
Button
Physical Object
Her Fight is My Fight, Free Angela Davis
Black Power
Angela Davis grew up in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944. Later, she moved with her mother to New York City and studied at Brandeis University, the Sorbonne and the University of California-San Diego. In addition to the segregation and racial discrimination she experienced as a child, Davis was deeply influenced by the 1963 murder of four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, as well as the activism of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Black Panther Party. In 1968, she joined an all-black branch of the Community Party. The following year, UCLA hired Davis as an assistant professor of philosophy, a contentious appointment given her radical views, ultimately leading to her dismissal.
In the early-1970s, Davis became increasingly active in efforts to improve prison conditions for inmates, including the Soledad Brothers, two African American prisoners and Black Panther Party members, George Jackson and W. L. Nolen, who were incarcerated in the late 1960s. On August 7, 1970, 17-year old Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of black radical, George Jackson, burst into the Marin County courtroom of Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, where James McClain was on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake of Black prisoner Fred Billingsley’s murder by prison officials in San Quentin Prison in February of 1970. Carrying three guns registered to Angela Davis, Jackson, with the help of McClain and Ruchell Cinque Magee, who was set to testify as a witness in McClain's trial, seized Judge Haley and ordered attorneys, jurors and court officials to lie on the floor. Magee freed another testifying witness, Black Panther William A. Christmas, who also aided in the escape attempt. In addition to their own freedom, the group sought a trade the release of Judge Haley for the “Soledad Brothers,” George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette, who were charged with killing a white prison guard at California’s Soledad Prison. During an effort to flee the courthouse in a van, a shoot-out with police took place, killing Jackson, McClain, Christmas and Judge Haley. Two other hostages, Prosecutor Gary Thomas and juror Maria Elena Graham, were also injured, but survived. Ruchell Magee was the only abductor to survive. Although Davis did not participate in the actual break-out attempt, she became a suspect when it was discovered that the guns used by Jackson were registered in her name. Davis fled to avoid arrest and the FBI placed her on its “most wanted” list. Law enforcement captured her several months later in New York. During her high profile trial, black militants and New Left activists made ‘free Angela” a powerful slogan. In 1972, a jury acquitted Davis on all charges.
Angela Davis Defense Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
Button
Physical Object
Huelga Delano (Strike Delano)
United Farm Workers Movement
The Delano Grape Strike was organized by Cesar Chavez, Delores Huerta and the United Farm Workers of America and lasted from 1965 to 1970. The campaign incorporated nonviolent strategies such as boycotts and grassroots organizing to challenging the low pay of migrant workers by table-grape growers, namely the DiGiorgio Corporation and Schenley Industries. The Delano Strike, which received considerable national attention, ended in July 1970 with the signing of an agreement between the UFWA and the DiGiorgio Corporation.
United Farm Workers of America
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Button
Physical Object
I Am Furious (Female)
Women's Liberation
This collectively written essay offers a radical analysis of women's liberation in an effort to "formulate perspectives for the Women's Caucus of the New University Conference." The New University Conference was formed in March of 1968, "as the first politically left organization on American campuses with the explicit membership policy of including faculty and graduate students." By 1971, the organization had more than 2,000 dues paying members on roughly 60 campuses, but went into sharp decline in 1972, disbanding shortly thereafter. The Women's Caucus of the NUC was a particularly influential segment of the group and helped promote campus-based daycare centers and other feminist reforms. The essay begins with a quote from Engel's, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State": "The ultimate goal of a radical women’s movement must be revolution. This is because the condition of female oppression does not ‘depend on,’ is not ‘the product of,’ is not ‘integral to’ the structure of society; it is that structure. The oppression of women, though similar to that of blacks, differs from it in that it depends not on class divisions but rather on a division of labor premised on private property and resulting in the family as primary unit for the functioning of the economy. ‘The modern family,’ says Marx, ‘contains in embryo not only slavery… but serfdom also, since from the very beginning it is connected with agricultural serves. It contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state.” The essay goes on to explore women’s liberation and its links to consumerism, religion, psychiatry, economics, family, gender, race, the New Left and more.
Ellen Cantarow, Elizabeth Diggs, Katherine Ellis, Janet Marx, Lillian Robinson, Muriel Schien, published by Radical Education Project
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
pamphlet
International Women's Day
Women's Liberation
This flyer promotes the March 8, 1975, International Women's Day demonstration in Boston. It includes several images and quotes from women about various aspects of the discrimination and oppression they feel.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1971
mimeograph
flyer
Jeannette Rankin Brigade
Anti-War
Description
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to a federal office in the United States when she won a seat in the House of Representatives from Montana in 1916. Rankin was a women’s rights activist and a pacifist who opposed U.S. military interventionism. Prior to her election to Congress, Rankin worked on women’s suffrage while a student at the University of Washington. Washington State granted women the right to vote in 1910. During the mid-1910s, Rankin worked as a lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and played a role in helping women gain the right to vote in Montana in 1914. Her 1916 election to Congress came as the nation debated U.S. involvement in the First World War, which she opposed. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she famously said upon her election in 1916, “but I won’t be the last. In the House, Rankin played a key role in the national women’s suffrage movement and the ultimate passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment. After gerrymandering in Montana pushed her out of Congress in 1919, Rankin moved to Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s where she continued to speak nationally on peace and in favor of child labor laws, as well as the Sheppard-Towner Act, a social welfare program that benefitted women and children.
Rankin was elected to Congress from Montana a second time in 1940, again largely in opposition to U.S. intervention in the Second World War. Most notably, on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Rankin was the only House member to vote against the declaration of war on Japan, a vote that drew hisses from her all-male colleagues. "As a woman I can't go to war," she explained, "and I refuse to send anyone else.” Rankin abstained from voting on a declaration of war against Germany and Italy two days later. The positions effectively ended her congressional career. Asked years later if she regretted her actions, she replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute.”
In the post-war period, Rankin travelled extensively, including to India several times, where she studied Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. Largely ignored by her own generation, a rising tide of younger anti-war and women’s liberation activists during the 1960s found new inspiration in Rankin’s life and activism. In January of 1968, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of various women’s liberation and peace groups, organized the Jeannette Rankin Peace Parade, an anti-war march from Union Station to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The group had formed the previous year when Rankin told a peace gathering in Atlanta on the same day that the U.S. death toll in Vietnam hit 10,000, “If we had 10,000 women who were willing to make the sacrifices that these boys had given their lives for – that we could stop the war.” The demonstration ran into opposition from Capitol Police, who invoked an 1882 law barring protests on Capitol grounds. It was the first time the law had ever been enforced. The demonstrators filed a legal grievance, but court action did not come by the day of the event. As a result, organizers decided not to go to the Capitol, which would be a violation of the law and might undermine their appeals to moderate women, wives and mothers. An estimated 5,000 women participated in the protest at Union Station, including folk singer, Judy Collins, Vel Phillips, Coretta Scott King and Dagmar Wilson, who gave speeches later at the nearby Omni Shoreham Hotel. Demonstrators held a sign stating, “End the War in Vietnam and the Social Crisis at Home.” As a former member of Congress, Rankin was allowed on the floor of the House, where she presented House Speaker, John McCormack, with a peace petition that demand Congress to withdraw troops from Vietnam, make reparations to the Vietnamese, and “refuse the insatiable demands of the military industrial complex.” She also met and spoke with Senate Leader, Mike Mansfield, who was also from Montana.
Some more militant women’s liberation advocates were displeased with the emphasis on respectability politics, mourning wives and mothers. Indeed, a Washington Post article about the protest afterward emphasized that it was “peaceful and ladylike.” In response to this emphasis, several hundred members of the Brigade, dressed in “miniskirts and high boots,” attempted to commandeer the microphone at the Omni and complained that King and Wilson had been invited to participate merely to appeal to “church women” in the demonstration. The splinter group then staged a funeral march at Arlington National Cemetery, where they paraded a dummy in “feminine getup” and “blonde curls,” to a funeral dirge “lamenting woman’s traditional role which encourages men to develop aggression and militarism to prove their masculinity.” A flyer the faction made and passed out to Rankin Brigade members stated:
“Don’t Bring Flowers...Do be prepared to sacrifice your traditional female roles. You have refused to hanky-wave boys off to war with admonitions to save the American Mom and Apple Pie. You have resisted your roles of supportive girl friends and tearful widows, receivers of regretful telegrams and worthless medals of honor. And now you must resist approaching Congress playing these same roles that are synonymous with powerlessness. We must not come as passive suppliants begging for favors, for power cooperates only with power. We must learn to fight the warmongers on their own terms, though they believe us capable only of rolling bandages. Until we have united into a force to be reckoned with, we will be patronized and ridiculed into total political ineffectiveness. So if you are really sincere about ending this war, join us tonight and in the future.”
Jeannette Rankin Brigade
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1967 or early-1968
Button
Physical Object
Juan de la Cruz Liberation Brigade
United Farm Workers Movement
Juan de la Cruz migrated to the United States under the bracero program, working at the Roberts Farm in Arvin, California. De la Cruz joined the United Farm Workers of America in 1965, advocating for living wages of workers, clean drinking water, and public health facilities. De la Cruz was killed in August 1973 during a picketing demonstration occurring between Arvin and Weedpatch, California.
United Farm Workers of America
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970s
Button
Physical Object
National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights
Gay Liberation
This button shows an image of the U.S. Capitol Building along with a pink flag containing the astrological symbols for male and female homosexuality against a black field. This button advertises the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington, D.C. in 1979 where approximately 125,000 gay rights activists marched for civil and legal protection.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1979
Button
Physical Object
Rainbow River
White Panther Party
Rainbow River was an underground press paper put out by the White Panther Party in Somerville, Massachusetts. In this issue, article topics include drugs, high schools and oppression, draft resistance, poetry about revolution and food coops, a Weather Underground statement and the White Panther Party 12-Point Program.
White Panther Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
underground press
newsletter
Spectre, no. 4
Women's Liberation
This publication was created by a group of "revolutionary separatist white women" and explores a variety of intersectional dynamics of the women's liberation movement, including race, class and sexuality.
revolutionary separatist white women, published by Know, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
September/October, 1971
underground press
Statue of Liberty Couple
Gay Liberation
This button features an image of two Statues of Liberty in bright pink holding hands. The image aims to forge a link between constitutional liberties and gay liberation.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970s
Button
Physical Object
Stay in the Streets, Free the Panthers
Black Power
This Black Panther Party button addresses the effort to free Black Panther members imprisoned by the state and federal government during the Black Power era. The Panthers were subjected to widespread repression and a particular target of the FBI's COINTELPRO programs, which categorized the organization as a domestic terrorist group. To movement activists and allies, these prisoners were more accurately described as political prisoners.
Black Panther Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Button
Physical Object
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Gay Liberation
Founded in New York City in 1970 as a caucus within the Gay Liberation Front, the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, was an activist organization established by legendary civil rights activists and drag queens of color, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson, to advocate for homeless drag queens and young gay runaways. Both Rivera and Johnson were veterans of the Stonewall rebellion and the intense period of radical political organizing the proceeded it. STAR addressed the intersectionality of race and class with sexuality by emphasizing poverty and homelessness within the transgender community.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
Button
Physical Object
Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon (I have Puerto Rico in my heart)
Puerto Rican Nationalism
The Young Lords Organization (YLO) functioned as a Puerto Rican nationalist group geographically focused in large urban areas such as Chicago and New York City. The YLO sought to address U.S. imperialism, Puerto-Rican self-determination, and public health access.
Young Lords Organization
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Button
Physical Object
The Amigas Club
Gay Liberation
This button advertises the Amigas Club, a gay civic organization in Detroit made up predominantly of middle-class black women.
The Amigas Club
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
Button
Physical Object
United Farm Workers of New York Pamphlet
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America was founded in 1962 following the merger between Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association. The new union was led by Chavez and Delores Huerta. In general, the UFWA sought to raise awareness of migrant workers’ rights and utilized nonviolent strategies such as collective bargaining, strikes, and boycotts, to secure and protect farm-workers labor rights, work hours, wages and access to health care. During the late-1960s and mid-1970s, the UFWA initiated well-known boycotts against table grapes and lettuce to protest what they viewed as unfair labor contracts and unacceptable working conditions.
This document, created by the New York chapter of the UFW includes a interview with Cesar Chavez, data about seasonal farm workers, the impact of farm labor on children, poverty level wages for farm workers, and solidarity with the Vietnamese people.
United Farm Workers New York
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
early-1970s
pamphlet
Venereal Disease
Sexual Health
This pamphlet details venereal disease, syphilis, gonorrhea , symptoms and lack of symptoms, testing and diagnosis, testing for cure, complications and treatments, funding, prevention, important facts on vd.
Health Organizing Collective with
Ney York Women's Health and Abortion Project
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
We Are Attica: Interviews with Prisoners from Attica
Prisoner's Rights Movement
The Attica Prison uprising, which took place in upstate New York in September of 1971, was the largest prison rebellion since the Civil War. During the late-1960s and early-1970s, a prisoner’s rights movement emerged across the U.S. At the Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, prisoners complained about chronic overcrowding, censorship of letters, poor living conditions that limited them to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Puerto Rican and African American prisoners, who made up a majority of the inmate population received especially harsh and discriminatory treatment, including the lowest-paying jobs, racial harassment and violence from the primarily white guards. Emboldened by the spirit of the Black Power movement and radical ideology, some inmates saw themselves as “political prisoners.”
As their demands continued to go unmet, the situation at Attica became increasingly volatile. On the morning of September 9, 1971, a small group of prisoners overpowered guards, spurring a more wide-spread uprising at the prison. In the initial chaos, Correction Officer, William Quinn, was badly beaten and thrown out a second floor window, which resulted in his death a few days later. Ultimately, a group of inmate leaders restored order within the prison and began negotiating with outside authorities, including Governor Nelson Rockefeller, through intermediaries that included noted civil rights attorney, William Kunstler, and New York Times columnist, Tom Wicker. Prisoners also requested Louis Farrakhan, from the Nation of Islam, but he refused. One leader of the prisoners, 21-year old, L.D. Barkley, famously said in an early statement, “We are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace, that means each and every one of us here, have set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed. We will not compromise on any terms except those terms that are agreeable to us. We’ve called upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens the lives of not only us, but of each and every one of you, as well.” Prisoners issued a list of demands, such as better education and food quality, fair visitation rights, improved medical treatment and sanitation, less mail censorship, more religious freedom, fairer disciplinary and parole processes, an end to brutality from guards and, most controversially, amnesty for crimes committed in the course of the riot itself.
Gov. Nelson A Rockefeller refused to visit the prison during the take-over, instead breaking off negotiations and ordering state troopers and guards to retake Attica by force. During the siege, law enforcement shot indiscriminately, killing 9 of 42 hostages, as well as 33 prisoners. Retaliation against inmates by prison authorities was pervasive, including beatings, torture, burning, and sexual abuse. Evidence suggests Barkley initially surrendered along with other prisoners, but that officers searched him out then shot him in the back.
The New York State Special Commission on Attica later wrote, "With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the State Police assault which ended the four-day prison uprising was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War." The rebellion at Attica did ultimately result in some modest prison reform, including a grievance procedure and more regular communication between prison authorities and prisoner representatives. In addition, lawyers successfully defended the prisoners who were indicted after the uprising and many years later obtained $8 million from the state for some of the survivors and the families of the dead. Similarly, the State of New York agreed to a $12 million settlement with the families of slain prison employees.
In the decades since, the Attica uprising has continued to carry political and cultural currency, referenced in books, film, television, music and poetry. According to Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, the tragedy at Attica “shows the nation that even the most marginalized citizens will never stop fighting to be treated as human beings. It testifies to this irrepressible demand for justice. This is Attica’s legacy.”
This pamphlet includes a chronology of events and a series of interviews with prisoners from Attica, including Roger Champen, Frank Lott, Donald Noble, Jerome Rosenberg, George Nieves, Carl Jones-El and Frank Smith.
created by Attica Defense Committee and published Great Jones Printing Company
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
pamphlet
What is the GAA?
Gay Liberation
This leaflet provides a basic overview of the structure and politics of the Gay Activists Alliance.
Gay Activists Alliance
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969 or early-1970s
leaflet
What is the Sexual Revolution? What is the Gay Revolution?
Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation
This brief leaflet provides a response to two questions: What is the Sexual Revolution? What is the Gay Revolution? The writing links sexual revolution to changing relations between men and women and gay liberation to a broader struggle for human liberation.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
mimeograph
leaflet
Where the Action Is
Gay Liberation
This leaflet lists locations in New York where protest action was taking place in the gay liberation movement.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
mimeograph
leaflet
White Panther Party "Ten-Point Program"
White Panther Party
Founded in 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair as a response to Huey P. Newton’s call for separate, white, anti-racist groups in support of the Black Panther Party, the White Panthers served as a countercultural group dedicated to "cultural revolution." The group was most active in Detroit, Michigan, and was connected with the porto-punk band, MC5. Though a white anti-racist organization, the White Panthers worked with a variety of other groups in what was known as the Rainbow Coalition.
This "Ten-Point Program" is a variation of the Black Panther Party's original "Ten-Point Program."
White Panther Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
July 4, 1970
manifesto
Woman Power
Women's Liberation
The symbol on this button emerged during the women’s liberation movement of the late-1960s and 1970s and is most often associated with “radical feminism.” The symbol combines the astrological symbol for Venus, representing the feminine, or woman, and the raised fist, denoting power, militancy and radicalism, and most often associated with the Black Power movement.
According to Jo Freeman, "The feminist button depicting a clenched fist inside the biological female symbol was produced by Robin Morgan for the second Miss America Pageant demonstration, in 1969. Unlike the double X, it combined the elements of defiance and revolution with that of femaleness. The original version was a dark red on a white background. It has undergone some regional changes -- Boston's button is outlined, Chicago's has narrow lines, New Haven's fist crashes through the top of the female symbol-- but the basic design is the same.
Initially, Robin Morgan worried over the choice of a red button for this particular demonstration. Ever conscious that major corporations like to co-opt incipient protest movements, she imagined that the cosmetic firm sponsoring the pageant might respond by manufacturing a matching lipstick named 'Liberation Red.' Therefore, if we were asked about the button, we were instructed to reply that the color was 'Menstrual Red.' No one would name a lipstick that."
(https://www.jofreeman.com/buttons/saybuttons.htm)
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
late-1960s and 1970s
Button
Physical Object
Women and the Churches
Women's Liberation
This leaflet offers a critique of Judaism and Christianity as historically sexist religious faiths and institutions and argues for reparations.
Chicago Women's Liberation Union
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
photocopy
leaflet
Women Women Women
Women's Liberation
This button, which reads, “Women Women Women" on a field of white with an extended female astrological sign in pink, was created during a final mass mobilization of women’s rights organizations in 1978 as a part of an effort to gain final ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the states. Ultimately, the campaign was unsuccessful, as a new wave of conservative political reaction turned the tide against the amendment during the next three years.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1978
Button
Physical Object
Wounded Knee Information & Defense Leaflet No. 4
American Indian Movement
This leaflet details the on-going struggle by the Oglala Sioux
People against the U.S. government and its representatives on the tribal council in the wake of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.
Wounded Knee Information & Defense Center
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
leaflet