San Francisco Mime Troupe
Counterculture
The San Francisco Mime Troupe was an avant-garde, “guerilla theater” troupe created by R.G. Davis in 1959 and dedicated to political satire. Peter Berg directed the group throughout its heyday in the 1960s. Initially performing in lofts and basements, the SFMT gained notoriety during the mid- and late-1960s for its rambunctious free performances outdoors in public parks, particularly Golden Gate Park. Their performances targeted political repression in the U.S., American military intervention abroad, racism, sexism, materialism and capitalism. Seen as a part of the countercultural movement, the SFMT also had several well-known run-ins with law enforcement, often charged with “obscenity”. Their 1965 Minstrel Show, Or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, was performed in black face and offended some — both black and white. In another piece, an actor played a military policeman who paraded prisoners into Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza and began to abuse them. The troupe was also arrested on the campus of the University of California-Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement. Berg later went on to co-found, the Diggers with Emmett Grogan, a collective that brought a sense of theater to their charity work with the hippies and the poor in San Francisco.
San Francisco Mime Troupe
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1960s
Button
Physical Object
Free the Panther 21
Black Power
In April of 1969, after a lengthy, coordinated effort by local and federal law enforcement to infiltrate and disrupt the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, District Attorney Frank Hogan indicted 21 members of the organization, claiming a widespread conspiracy to murder policemen and blow up four police stations, five department stores, railroad lines, the Queens Board of Education building, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Ultimately, 13 Panthers, including Afeni Shakur and Dhoruba Bin Wahad, stood trial in a case that became a cause celebre among black militants and the broader New Left. For ten months prior to the trial, the jailed Panthers were held in solitary confinement with lights on 24 hours a day and denied reading materials, recreational facilities and family visitation. Several were not given mattresses and the two female Panthers were limited to four sheets of toilet paper per day. It was also reported that prison officials harassed Panther attorneys. Famed composer, Leonard Bernstein, helped raise bail money for the “New York 21.” During the court proceedings, District Attorney Hogan referred to the Panthers as a “terrorist organization,” read from Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book.” showed jurors the film, “The Battle of Algiers” and attempted to introduce political posters from one of the defendant’s apartment into evidence. In what was, at the time, the longest and most costly trial in New York state history, the Panthers were acquitted of all 156 charges on May 12, 1971. In the wake of the failed prosecution, local law enforcement and the FBI continued to target the New York Black Panther Party.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969-1971
Button
Physical Object
FBI agents (1 image)
Black Panther Party/COINTELPRO
Photographs of FBI agents, William A. Cohendet and Charles Bates, along with their wives and Roz Payne. The agents helped Payne piece together some of the information related to COINTELPRO and the Black Panther Party when she was working on the DVD release of the Newsreel films on the Panthers in the late-1990s.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1999
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
Handwriting On the Wall, no. 2
New Left
This SDS poster as a "wall newspaper" which was posted on city streets in Chicago by members of the group as a means of circulating their political agenda in the wake of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. This poster, the second in a series, discusses protests, skirmishes with police and strategy for upcoming activism.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
"wall newspaper"
Fag Rag, June 1971
Gay Liberation
Fag Rag was a significant, Boston-based "gay male newspaper" published from 1971 and the early-1980s. In the wake of the Stonewall rebellion in New York, gay liberation activism in Boston accelerated, including the establishment of a periodical, Lavender Vision. Initially, gay men and women worked on the newspaper together as a "69 publication," meaning half of the newspaper was devoted to gay men and half to gay women. Shortly after its initial publication, though, lesbian activists split, feeling that gay women needed a space of their own. The newspaper was relaunched as a women-centered periodical and local gay men established Fag Rag. At its height, Fag Rag had between 400-500 subscribers and a print run of 4,000-4,500. Like other underground press periodicals, Fag Rag featured a mix of original journalism, opinion and graphic arts related to the gay liberation movement, as well as interviews with notable figures, including, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, John Wieners, Allen Young, Gerard Malanga, John Rechy, Ned Rorem, and Gore Vidal. Features in this issue include: yoga; Phil Ochs; a failed attempt to establish a gay community center; psychology and homosexuality; a reflection by a gay teenager; homosexuality and military service; coming out; the anti-war movement; a critique of the May Day protest in D.C.; “Revolutionary sexism” in the Black Panther Party; Machismo and police; "gayness" and the Cuban Revolution; the objectification of the “cock”; as well as a selection of poetry.
Fag Rag Collective
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
June 1971
underground press
Midnight Special Prisoners News, vol. 3, no. 7, July 1973
Prisoner's Rights Movement
Midnight Special Prisoners News was published in the early-1970s by the National Lawyers Guild in New York. The newspaper was a part of the larger prisoner’s rights movement and sought to provide news about conditions inside prisons from the prisoner’s point of view. It also shared legal information aimed at helping prisoners and expanding their rights. In this issue, articles focus on the Intensive Treatment Program Center in Marquette, Michigan; conditions at Attica State Prison; the purpose of police; reports from prisons in Milan, Michigan, Lorton, Virginia, Springfield, Missouri, Clinton and Bordertown, New Jersey, Bedford Hills, New York, Frontera, California, Dannemora, New York, Mattewan State Hospital in New York, and Riker’s Island, New York; a plea for prisoner unity; the case of the Virgin Island 5; the Wounded Knee 8; poetry; race, class and prisoner unity; the Polar Bear Party; education and liberation; update on a Brooklyn prisoner rights lawsuit; letters to the editor.
National Lawyers Guild
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
July 1973
underground press
RAT Subterranean News, May 22-June 4, 1970
New Left
RAT Subterranean News was published in New York, starting in March of 1968 and was edited by Jeff Shero, Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who had come North from Austin, Texas, where they worked on The Rag, another important underground paper. Whereas the East Village Other represented the counterculture point of view, RAT had a left political orientation. This issue covers a wide range of topics, including media and revolution; Joan Bird and Dionne Donghi; a labor walk-out at Bell Telephone in New York; the police killing of six black men in Augusta, Georgia; police killing of two students at Jackson State; street-fighting between Puerto Rican youths and police on the Lower East Side; poetry; the role of women in the labor movement; brief reports on anti-colonial struggles in Portuguese’s African colonies; corporate repression of indigenous people in Brazil; 9 days of global activism in May; revolutionary feminism; squatting; “The Woman-Identified Woman”; How to…; emergency first aid for street warfare; ads and personals; repression against marijuana advocates; letters to the editor.
RAT Subterranean News
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
May 22-June 4, 1970
underground press
Leviathan, vol. 1, no. 8, 1969
New Left
Leviathan was a radical New Left newspaper loosely aligned with Student for a Democratic Society, published in 1969 and 1970. Early editorial leaders of the periodical included Carol Brightman, Beverly Leman, Kathy McAfee, Marge Piercy and Sol Yurick in New York, as well as Peter Booth Wiley, Carole Deutch, Danny Beagle, Matthew Steen, Bob Gavriner, Al Haber, Bruce Nelson, Todd Gitlin, and David Wellman. The paper, which took a generally serious, intellectual-minded approach to radical organizing, as opposed to the more irreverent tone of the counterculture, ceased publication in the Fall of 1970 in the wake of SDS factionalization. This issue focuses on political repression against radicals, including a lengthy introductory essay on political repression; articles on “torture” by New York City police; the relationship of white revolutionaries to Third World liberation struggles; systematic repression of white radicals; repression against the Black Panther Party; a prison letter from John Sinclair; an interview with correction officer; an essay about the jail experience of Columbia University activists.
Leviathan Publications, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
underground press
Red Morning, no. 6, Summer 1971
Canadian New Left
Red Morning was a Canadian "revolutionary organization" located in Toronto during the early-1970s that operated in a "democratically centralist way." In this issue, articles focus on why the youth will make the revolution; the organizing philosophy of Red Morning; Wacheea, a tent city for young people; demonstration in Queen's Park; police repression; Toronto alternative press; Beggar's Banquet music event; Fabulous Fury Freak Brothers; free legal clinic; Edmonton riots; Sir George trials; release of Charles Gagnon and Pierre Vallieres; struggle in the U.S.; Chicano activism in Albuquerque; Latin American armed struggle; a "Free Paul Rose" insert poster and article; global armed revolution; self-defense during street fighting; women in jail; birth control; survival resources; Kingston Prison trial; Red Morning Program.
Red Morning
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Summer 1971
underground press
off our backs, February 1970
Women's Liberation
off our backs (OOB) was a radical feminist newspaper published from 1970 through 2008, when it disbanded due to financial trouble. Some consider OOB the longest-running feminist periodical in the U.S. The newspaper, founded in 1969, was run on a consensus decision-making model by a collective of women, originally including, Marilyn Salzman Webb, Heidi Steffens, Marlene Wicks, Colette Reid, and Norma Lesser. According to Wicks OOB “really started because Marilyn Salzman-Webb was writing for the Guardian in New York, and every time she would send articles having to do with women, they would be totally screwed up and edited to the point that they wouldn’t make any sense at all. So after a meeting at the Women’s Liberation Center on Mintwood Place, we were rapping about what we could do about that, and I don’t know who said it first, ‘Why don’t we start our own?’ but the response was ‘Yes, let’s do that.’” In the first issue of the paper, editors explained that the name “reflects our understanding of the dual nature of the women’s movement. Women need to be free of men’s domination to find their real identities, redefine their lives, and fight for the creation of a society in which they can lead decent lives as human beings. At the same time, women must become aware that there would be no oppressor without the oppressed, that we carry the responsibility for withdrawing the consent to be oppressed. We must strive to get off our backs, and with the help of our sisters to oppose and destroy that system which fortifies the supremacy of men while exploiting the mass for the profit of the few.” OOB strove to cover the fullness of women’s experience across the country. In this issue, articles explore New York Governor John Lindsay and police repression in New York City; drug use and drug pushers; Malcolm X; heroin; “Fascist Funnies”; “pigs.”
off our backs
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
February 1970
underground press
Right On!
Black Panther Party
Right On! was published by the Revolutionary Peoples Communications Network and the Black Community News Service of the Black Panther Party. This issue includes articles about Attica Prison Rebellion; Eldridge Cleaver and Algeria; the murder of George Jackson; the aftermath of San Quentin; prison resistance by Afeni Shakur; the murder of Leroy King; police shoot-out in Detroit; slumlords; the Black Liberation Army; police repression against Black Panthers in New Jersey; political corruption in New Jersey; Black Liberation Army in Los Angeles; Free Food Program; welfare; prison and trial news; capitalism, dope and genocide; international acts; on Revolutionary Justice; voodoo in the black community; cartoons; poetry and the Ten-Point Program.
Black Community News Service
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
September 15-30, 1971
underground press
Fag Rag, January 1973
Gay Liberation
Fag Rag was a Boston-based gay liberation newspaper published by a group of writers and activists from 1971 through the early-1980s. This issue includes articles about a guide to bars, baths and books; an interview between a Hustler and customer"; a gay Vietnam veteran; generational differences in the gay liberation movement; homosexuals and welfare; the closet; the first international gay liberation congress in Milan; gay pride week; poetry; Miami Democratic Convention; "cocksucking" as a revolutionary act; police repression; race and homosexuality; gay experience at rest stops; homosexuality in prison; letters to the editor.
Fag Rag Collective
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
January 1973
underground press
1968 New York Student Strike (51 images)
Black Power
Student activism hit a new high point in 1968, when dozens of campus protests broke out at colleges and universities across the country and internationally. Events evolved at a quick pace that year. In the wake of the Tet Offensive in January, an estimated 500 students at New York University demonstrated against Dow Chemical recruiters on campus. Dow was the manufacturer of napalm, a chemical agent used by U.S. military in Vietnam to burn plant life and human beings during the war. Students at NYU and elsewhere opposed the links between the university and what came to be known as the “military-industrial complex.” That same month, Minnesota senator, Eugene McCarthy, entered the Democratic presidential nomination process as an anti-war candidate, shocking Lyndon B. Johnson’s re-election campaign by earning 40% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary.
Shortly thereafter, Robert Kennedy entered the race and Johnson shocked the nation by announcing he was dropping out of the race. In Early-April, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, spurring dozens of urban rebellions in cities nationwide, including Harlem. At NYU, administrators suspended class for two days to hold a series of student-faculty seminars on race relations and formed a new committee to create a policy focused on African American students and other students of color.
From April 22-27, student activists in SDS and the NYU Committee to End the War in Vietnam (CEWV) organize and lead a week-long “International Student-Faculty Strike to Bring Our Troops Home, End the Draft and Racial Oppression,” consisting of a series of campus anti-war protests and discussions, a class boycott on Friday, April 26, and then a march down 5th Avenue the following day. That same day, members of SDS and the Student Afro Society at Columbia University seize several campus buildings in what will ultimately become a significant international incident.
In May, student activists in Paris trigger a nationwide strike there. In June, Robert Kennedy is gunned down in Los Angeles after winning the Democratic primary in California. In August, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the “Prague Spring” protest movement. A few days later, Chicago police attacked New Left protesters outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In mid-September, a new controversy erupted at NYU surrounding the appointment of John Hatchett to head up the Martin Luther King Afro-American Student Center on campus. Hatchett had been a civil rights activist during the early-1960s, most significantly participating in sit-ins, marches and other demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1963, he moved to New York City to attend graduate school at NYU and Columbia University. He also taught in the New York public school system, where he continued to advocate for the interests of local black communities. On October 11, three months after Hatchett assumed his position as head of the AASC, administrators fired him amid claims that an article he wrote, “The Phenomenon of the Anti-Black Jews and the Black Anglo-Saxon: A Study in Educational Perfidy,” was anti-semitic and anti-white. In a speech, he had also referred to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Richard M. Nixon and the president of the United Teachers Federation, Albert Shanker, as “racist bastards.” NYU President, James Hester, told reporters that the primary cause of Hatchett’s firing was that he had “proved to be increasingly ineffective in performing his duties because of the incompatibility of many of his actions and public statements with the requirements of his position in the university.” The firing was applauded by many local Jewish, Catholic and Protestant religious leaders, but sharply criticized by campus militants. The American Jewish Congress stated at the time that they hoped the university would replace Hatchett with “someone who is more likely to guide black students into harmonious relationships with their fellow students and the communities in which they will live.”
In response to the firing, NYU student activists mounted a series of demonstrations, including a general strike that lasted for about ten days before fizzling. Student radicals also occupied two buildings on the NYU Bronx campus. The university ultimately offered a compromise, allowing Hatchett to remain an adviser to African American student groups on campus. In November, the AASC became independent of the university, run by a board made up of African American students and faculty.
The images in this set were taken by Roz Payne during the NYU protests of
Hatchett’s firing. Interestingly, a number of the signs also reference the local Ocean Hill-Brownsville “community control” movement that was powerful at the time in New York public schools. Activists saw both as examples of the need for greater autonomy for black and brown people within local educational institutions.
The Ocean Hill-Brownsville district had been reorganized as an experiment in local control of public schools, with a community-controlled school board instituted in the primarily African American neighborhoods. Rhody McCoy was appointed superintendent of the new board. McCoy, who was popular in the black community, was a controversial figure because he was a follower and friend of Malcom X. Some claimed he was heavily influenced by Harold Cruse’s seminal book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, and believed Jews were too involved and powerful within the black freedom movement. McCoy also appointed Herman Ferguson as the principle of one of the schools in the district. According to an article he wrote in The Guardian, Ferguson advocated that schools offer "instructions in gun weaponry, gun handling, and gun safety" as important survival skills for children of color in a racist society. Ultimately, the appointment was withdrawn.
Over several months, tensions simmered between the new Ocean Hill-Brownsville board and a number of white teachers and staff who the board claimed were trying to sabotage the experiment in local control. In response the school board attempted to fire 83 teachers and staff, almost all of whom were Jewish. The teacher’s union balked at the move, which violated terms of their labor agreement with the district. Albert Shanker, the head of the teacher’s union called the board action, "a kind of vigilante activity." In response, teachers went out on strike. When they attempted to return to the school on May 15, a group of parents and community members who supported the board attempted to block them. Local police broke the blockade, allowing the teachers to return, though the board closed the schools. On May 22-23, teachers again protested by staying home, promoting the board to fire 350 more teachers.
At the start of the new school year in August and September, a city-wide teachers' strikes shut down the New York City public schools for 36 days. The strike caused divisions among civil rights leaders and union members. Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph supported the striking teachers, causing sharp criticism from many black parents, teachers and a new generation of racial justice activists. While large percentages of teachers participated in the strike, black and brown teachers, as well as white teachers who taught primarily black and brown students, tended to support the strike in much lower numbers.
The strike ended in mid-November with the state seizing control of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district and reinstating the fired teachers. Some argued that militant black teachers were “purged.” Undoubtedly, the conflict heightened tensions between the African American and Jewish communities.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Yippies at HUAC Hearings (85 images)
New Left/Counterculture
In 1968, in the wake of the police riot outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, as well as other members of the Chicago 7, including Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, and early anti-Vietnam war activist Robert Greenblatt. A statement by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC) called the HUAC hearings an “attempt by the Johnson administration to use every mechanism at its disposal to legitimize the action of Mayor Daley and the Chicago police.” Lawyers for the subpoenaed activists included Michael Kennedy and Henry di Suvero of the NECLC, William Kunstler of the Law Center for Constitutional Rights, and Gerald Lefcourt of the National Lawyers Guild.
In classic Yippie fashion, Rubin and Hoffman sought to create a satirical theatrical media spectacle out of their appearances. According to a Harvard Crimson article in February of 1969, “In the fifties, the most effective sanction was terror. Almost any publicity from HUAC meant the ‘blacklist'. Without a chance to clear his name, a witness would suddenly find himself without friends and without a job. But it is not easy to see how in 1969, a HUAC blacklist could terrorize an SDS activist. Witnesses like Jerry Rubin have openly boasted of their contempt for American institutions. A subpoena from HUAC would be unlikely to scandalize Abbie Hoffman or his friends.” Rubin told the Liberation News Service that he “plans to use the hearings as a stage for a theatrical assault on HUAC and as a platform to call for disruptive actions on election day.” During an earlier appearance before HUAC in 1966, Rubin dressed as an American revolutionary and passed out copies of the Declaration of Independence, claiming to be a descendent of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and declaring "Nothing is more American than revolution." He also blew bubble gum bubbles as committee members questioned him about his communist affiliations, while others offered the committee Nazi salutes. During his responses to committee questions, he highlighted the segregationist pasts of prominent HUAC members, as well as their ties to Pentagon contractors.
Not to be outdone, Hoffman kiddingly told the LNS, “I plan to turn state’s evidence. I plan to squeal on everybody… I am going to indict my friend Peter Rabbit.” He went on to explain that his strategy was to “get crazy. Craziest motherfuckers they ever seen in this country. ‘Cause that’s the only way we’re gonna beat them. So fucking crazy that they can’t understand it at ALL.” As Hoffman’s biographer, Jonah Raskin related, “Abbie printed and distributed his own subpoenas, which were addressed to “Yippies, Motherfuckers, Commies, Narcos, Saboteurs, Conspirators, Sons of Liberty, Freaks, Guerrillas.” His subpoenas urged everyone to come to the hearings with “pot, incense, yo-yos, molotov cocktails, flowers, energy, black widow spiders, balloons, flags, gold balls, PIGS, music, banners, LSD, flaming crosses, hats, fruit, battleships, life, rice, licorice, slogans, flesh, rocks, lights, noise makers, buttons, cameras, gorillas.”
On the opening day of the hearings - October 1 – the activists and their lawyers engaged in a “stand-in” to protest the proceedings. Attorney Michael Kennedy shouted, “The Constitution is being raped, and we as lawyers are being emasculated in an armed camp.” Hoffman wore a tie-dyed t-shirt with feathers in his bushy hair, while Rubin wore a bandolier of live cartridges and carried a toy M-16 rifle. Members of the newly-formed women’s liberation group, Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), including Roz Payne, wore black hats and dresses and carried broomsticks. As Raskin described, “Forming a circle around Jerry, they burned incense, danced, and chanted.”
Jerry Rubin described the the events this way:
“I come to the HUAC hearings wearing a bandolero of real bullets and carrying a toy M-16 rifle on my shoulder. The rifle was a model of the rifles the Viet Cong steal and then use to kill American soldiers in Vietnam.
The pigs stop me at the door of the hearings. They grab the bullets and the gun. It is a dramatic moment. Press and yippies pack us in tightly. The pigs drag me down three flights of stairs and remove the bullets, leaving the gun, Viet Cong pajamas, Eldridge Cleaver buttons, Black Panther beret, war paint, earrings, bandolero, and the bells which ring every time I move my body. My costume carried a nonverbal message: ‘We must all become stoned guerrillas.’
The secret to the costume was the painted tits. Guerrilla war in America is going to come in psychedelic colors. We are hippie-guerrillas.
In HUAC’s chambers Abbie Hoffman jumps up and yells out, ‘May I go to the bathroom?’ Young kids reading that in their hometown papers giggle because they have to ask permission every time they want to go to the bathroom in school.
The message of my costume flipped across the country in one day: an example of our use of the enemy’s institutions – her mass media – to turn on and communicate with one another.”
Over the next few days, Hoffman and Rubin continued to create a spectacle from the hearings. Rubin returned with his bandolier, toy gun, Native American headband, body paint and North Vietnamese flag cape. But it was Hoffman who stole the show. Again, Jonah Raskin explains,
“Gerald Lefcourt later remembered that Abbie did not want to let HUAC steal the media spotlight. ‘He wanted what he was about to be on the evening news, and not what they were about,’ Lefcourt said. He explained that Abbie ‘had the idea of wearing a flag shirt and saying “I’m more American that you.” He was certain that he would be arrested, and that the arrest would make the news and steal the show from the committee. Moreover, he had a hunch that the police would rip off the American flag shirt from his back. Then, they’d be guilty of desecration.’
On the morning of October 4, everything went more or less as Abbie had planned. Anita painted the flag of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) on his back. Then Abbie put on a commercially made American flag shirt and pinned on two of his favorite buttons: one that read ‘Wallace for President: Stand Up for America” and another that said ‘Vote Pig in Sixty-Eight, Yippie.’ He also wore dark glasses that made him look mysterious and a bit menacing as well. Sure enough, on the sidewalk outside the Cannon Office Building, law enforcement officials stopped him, tore up his shirt, and arrested him for desecration of the flag. Abbie spent the night in jail. It was a dreadful experience that only added to his sense of outrage about the whole affair. ‘The law I was arrested under would make everyone who dresses in an Uncle Sam costume and most drum majorettes criminals,’ he wrote in the Epilogue to Revolution for the Hell of It. And he added that he had recently watched Phyllis Diller on TV wearing ‘a miniskirt that looked more like an American flag than the shirt I wore,’ but no one had arrested her.
He was the first person to be prosecuted under the new federal statute that made it a crime to deface or defile the flag. U.S. Attorney Benton Becker argued that the flag was ‘symbolically the United States of America,’ and that the government had ‘a legitimate interest in maintaining the sanctity of its symbols.’ Gerald Lefcourt defended Abbie on First Amendment grounds: wearing the flag was a form of symbolic speech, Lefcourt argued. His client had never intended to dishonor the flag. Morover, there was no physical violence, no personal injury, and no provocation to the public. ‘The communication of ideas is what the country is all about,’ Lefcourt told the court. ‘If we don’t protect the communication of ideas, then we’re leading ourselves down the path of serious trouble to a repressive society.’
On the witness stand, Abbie explained that he wore the American flag shirt because ‘I was going before the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives and I don’t particularly consider that committee American, and I don’t consider that House of Representatives particularly representative; and I wore the shirt to show that we were in the tradition of the founding fathers of this country.’ He was found guilty of desecrating the flag and was sentenced to a thirty-day prison term, although an appeals court would subsequently reverse the lower court’s decision. 'Your honor, I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country,' he said after he was sentenced.”
As Hoffman was arrested outside the HUAC hearings, Jerry Rubin comically shouted at police, “Communists,” for not arresting him, as well. Two months later, at another round of HUAC hearings in December, Rubin wore a Santa Claus costume “in a direct attempt to reach the head of every child in the country.” Hoffman refused to testify in front of HUAC.
The photos in this set were taken by Roz Payne on October 3 and 4, 1968, and include images of Abbie Hoffman and Anita Hoffman’s arrest, Jerry Rubin in costume, Hoffman talking to Paul Krassner, a dinner with lawyers and other miscellaneous shots from the courthouse scene.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
New York Anti-War Protest
(36 images)
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Images taken by Roz Payne of an unidentified demonstration in New York.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Pig
(1 image)
Police Repression
Roz Payne claims this photograph is of an unidentified activist who was an FBI informer.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Siege at Columbia (7 images)
New Left
The “Siege at Columbia,” as some called it, refers to the 1968 take-over of two buildings at Columbia University by white and black student radicals. It was a part of the broader global student revolt of that year.
In early March of 1967, Columbia SDS activist, Bob Feldman, uncovered documents that linked the university to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, sparking a year of anti-war protests on campus. Around the same time, opposition grew to a plan by Columbia to construct the Morningside Park gymnasium. Some were critical of the university’s appropriation of public park land in Harlem to build the new facility, while others labelled a proposal to create a separate “back-door” entrance for local community members, most of whom were African American and Puerto Rican, “Gym Crow,” claiming it was segregationist and discriminatory. Columbia, a major land-owner in the area, had a decades-long history of displacing local black and brown residents and applying stricter scrutiny to community members who used their facilities.
On March 27, 1968, student anti-war activists staged a peaceful demonstration inside Low Library. In response, university administration placed six activists on probation for violating a Columbia ban on indoor protests. Tensions grew between university administrators and student activists. On April 12, Columbia University president, Grayson Kirk, stated, “Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.” On April 22, Columbia SDS leader, Mark Rudd, replied, “Dear Grayson, . . . You call for order and respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism. There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation. I’ll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I’m sure you don’t like a whole lot: 'Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up.'"
On April 23, members of SDS and Columbia’s Student Afro Society (SAS) led a second attempt to protest inside Low Library, but were prevented by university police. Following the campus confrontation, activists marched to the gymnasium construction site and attempted to block work there, resulting in scuffles with local police and some arrests. SDS and SAS members then returned to campus, where they occupied Hamilton Hall, which housed classrooms, as well as administrative offices. Activists detained Dean Henry Coleman (and released him 24 hours later) and issued six demands:
1) Disciplinary actions against the six originally charged must be lifted and no reprisals taken against anyone in this demonstration.
2) Construction of the Columbia gym on Harlem land must stop NOW.
3) The University must use its good offices to see that all charges against persons arrested at the gym site be dropped.
4) All relations with IDA must be severed, including President Kirk’s and Trustee William Burden’s membership on the Executive Board.
5) President Kirk’s edict on indoor demonstrations must be dropped.
6) All judicial decisions should be made in an open hearing with due process judged by a bipartite committee of students and faculty.
Soon after the occupation began, though, racial friction among the activists emerged. Black student activists requested that white radicals separate themselves from African American demonstrators. Black militants wanted to maintain a single focus on the construction of the new gymnasium, whereas white student activists also wanted to protest the broader issue of the university’s links to the war effort. In addition, members of SAS opposed the destruction of property, whereas SDS members did not. African American militants were concerned that destruction of property would play into long-standing racial stereotypes about black people. Ultimately, the two groups came to an agreement with white activists retreating from Hamilton Hall and occupying, instead, the President’s office in Low Library, along with three other buildings on campus. The siege at Columbia attracted significant national and even international attention, as well as the participation of community members, students from other campuses, and other activists, like SDS founder, Tom Hayden. On Friday, April 26, Black Power leaders, Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown arrived on campus.
The stand-off between occupying student activists and the administration continued for a week, with wrangling over terms of a possible resolution. An Ad Hoc faculty committee desperately tried to broker a deal, but student activists, administrators and local politicians consistently rejected their efforts. Despite a majority of students and local community seeming to support the occupying students, a groups of student athletes and conservative students formed what they called the “Majority Coalition” and formed a cordon around the occupied buildings in an effort to block food and water from entering the buildings to “starve out” the activists. In response, supportive faculty created a buffer between the Majority Coalition and the buildings.
On Tuesday, April 30, an estimated 1,000 police entered campus to clear the occupied buildings. Fearful of a race riot in Harlem just a few weeks after civil disorder had hit the community in the wake of Dr. King’s murder, a contingent of African American law enforcement dealt gingerly with SAS activists. As SAS leader, Raymond Brown recalled, “They must have had half the black senior officers in New York on-site at Hamilton Hall, led by Assistant Chief Inspector Waithe. I think there was a great determination that they were not going to kick any black students in their butts.” Barnard SAS member, Karla Spurlock-Evans said, “The police came into Hamilton Hall and handled us very gently—not at all characteristic of police officers in general. They loaded us onto buses and took us downtown to the Tombs.” By contrast, police stormed the buildings controlled by white radicals with clubs swinging indiscriminately. According to Columbia faculty member, Michael Rosenthal, “They started beating the shit out of people. No one was resisting. I was standing next to the 64-year-old English professor Fred Dupee when he was punched in the face.” Future New York governor, Goerge Pataki, who was a Columbia law student at the time and member of the “Majority Coalition,” remembered, “From around the back of Low library comes this wave of T.P.F. guys just clubbing everybody in sight. I guess their orders were to clear the campus, which was incredibly stupid and counterproductive because many of the people outside the buildings were the anti-radicals—the pro-cop people. The radicals were all inside the buildings.” Nancy Biberman, a Barnard SDS member, stated, “I saw the university rabbi being beaten by police, and I saw random students who were beaten for just being outside on campus. These cops had been sitting on the perimeter of campus all week, pent up, waiting and waiting. As soon as they were allowed on campus, there was a mêlée. It was called a police riot, and I believe it. It was terrifying.” Police officer, Gary Beamer, agreed, saying, “The police were forced to stand outside the campus for several days and watch crimes being committed—assaults, destruction of property, and preventing students who wanted to get an education from going to class. It didn’t sit well with most of the police. So naturally, when the green light finally came for the police to go in and restore order, they were pretty eager to do it.” And Columbia student, Hilton Obenzinger, told reporters years later, “I remember vividly a cop with a frozen grin on his face going up to a girl, a Barnard student. He lifted up his very long utility flashlight and slammed it on her head. And it wasn’t just once—it was again, and again, and again. She fell down and he kept beating her.” Conflict between students and police continued into the next day. In the end, 132 students, 4 faculty members and 12 police officers were injured and roughly 700 arrested. An estimated 30 students were suspended. After another round of campus protests between May 17-22, police beat 51 and arrested 177 more students. Following the spring demonstrations, Columbia university did scrap the Morningside Park gymnasium and severed some of their ties to the military-industrial complex.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Columbia Revolt
New Left
"In May 1968, the students of Columbia University went on strike after the administrators repeatedly ignored their demand for open discussion of the university's involvement in racist policies, exploitation of the surrounding community of Harlem. This is the story of our first major student revolt, told from inside the liberated buildings." (Roz Payne Archives) <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BUcYLuGiL_s" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Newsreel Films
Kit • Parker Films - YouTube
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
film
Yippie!
New Left
"Yippie is filmed farce, juxtaposing the brutal police riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention with the orgy scenes from D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance." A clear and energetic no-verbal statement of Yippie politics Hip jive." (Roz Payne Archive) <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cFSpn_uQjME" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Newsreel Films
YouTube
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
film
May Day (Black Panthers)
Black Panther Party
"On May 1, 1969 the Black Panther Party held a massive rally in San Francisco. Speakers Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and Charles Garry present the rally's demands for the release of Huey Newton and all political prisoners. The film includes footage of the police raid on Panther headquarters in San Francisco a few days prior to the rally and the Panther's Breakfast for Children Program." (Roz Payne Archive) <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rD8hKpFDIIo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Newsreel Films
YouTube
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
film
Pig Power
Police Repression
"As students take to the streets in New York and Berkeley, the forces of order illustrate Mayor Daley's thesis that the police are there "to preserve disorder", and we must organize to challenge their control and preserve our lives as well as our life styles. A short impressionistic montage of music and images pointing up the disparity between their force and ours. The function of police repressing Black and white demonstrators alike is emphasized. " (Roz Payne Archive)<br /><br /> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hsu6SiImwJA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Newsreel Films
YouTube
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
film
Ann Arbor Sun, January 1975, vol. 3, issue 1
New Left
The Ann Arbor Sun was a newspaper founded by John Sinclair in November 1968 as a vehicle for the White Panther Party. In the 1970s, the newspaper transitioned into an independent publication covering local issues, left-wing politics, music, and arts. Finally in 1976, publication was suspended indefinitely.
This issue includes articles on military science and research at the University of Michigan; ROTC; cuts to social services; Gerald Ford inquiry into the CIA; international briefs; the war in Vietnam; Kissinger and the Middle East; police Turn in a Pusher program; history of cocaine; Showcase of International Wares; community calendar; book, music and performance reviews.
Ann Arbor Sun, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
January 1975
newspaper
The Sun, October 1975
New Left
The Ann Arbor Sun was a newspaper founded by John Sinclair in November 1968 as a vehicle for the White Panther Party. In the 1970s, the newspaper transitioned into an independent publication covering local issues, left-wing politics, music, and arts. In 1975, the newspaper evolved into The Sun, which focused more on Detroit than Ann Arbor. Finally in 1976, publication was suspended indefinitely.
This issue includes articles on the state of the city; red-lining; overdoses; busing in Detroit; rent strikes in Ann Arbor; Police Athletic League; Angola; heroin industry and police; interview with Howard Kohn; Francis Ford Coppola interview; music and performance reviews; community calendar.
Ann Arbor Sun, Inc.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
October 1975
newspaper
The Longest Revolution, June 1977, vol. 1, no. 5
Women's Liberation
The Longest Revolution was a “news and views” periodical from a progressive feminist perspective created by The Collective of The Center for Women's Studies and Services, a women’s liberation organization that formed out of San Diego State University’s Women’s Studies Program, but which moved off-campus because of clashes with university administration. Articles in this issue focus on Anais Nin; women and art; battered women; International Women’s Year; gay liberation; rape; Planned Parenthood; marriage; Indian Health Services; sterilization; police; Date County gay rights; disability; pregnancy; National Organization for Women; media discrimination; local arts; a calendar and letters.
The Collective of The Center for Women's Studies and Services
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
June 1977
newspaper