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January 13, 2009 - 12:18 PM
John Woodford
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In August 1968, I quit my editing/writing job at Ebony Magazine in Chicago and joined Muhammad Speaks newspaper, even though I was not a member of the Nation of Islam. Why? Because Ebony's publisher wouldn't let the staff cover Rap Brown's arrest in the South or the many actions launched by the Black Panthers that year. I saw ample coverage of such stories in Muhammad Speaks, a weekly with a 500,000 readership at the time.
In addition to U.S. civil rights and international national-liberation struggles, one story I focused on right off was the Nigerian Civil War, which I came to see as not what our mass media was depicting. The cause of so-called "Biafra" was an effort to use the Ibo people as a means of splitting Nigeria and gaining control of the oil lands by a new mini-state. Sound familiar?
I went on to become editor-in-chief of Muhammad Speaks, where I kept up continuous anti-Vietnam War coverage. Finally, in 1972, I was ousted, chiefly a result of efforts, I have concluded, of undercover agents inside the Nation of Islam.
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December 02, 2008 - 10:21 AM
Pat
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As newly married grad students, my husband and I moved from UM to UW -- Ann Arbor to Madison. Madison was fully into protest.
http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/article.php?article=23588
Wild time.
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October 22, 2008 - 04:20 PM
Chellis Glendinning
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From Berkeley to Mexico City
RETORNO A 1968
Chellis Glendinning
68, Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Mexico D.F.: Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 1991. En español.
’68, Paco Ignacio Taibo II. New York: Seven Stories, 2004. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith.
1968. I thank my lucky stars I was in Berkeley.
Every noon I’d wend my way to Sproul Plaza, greet Michael Lerner at the political table he had fought for during the Free Speech Movement, grab a yogurt with Marty Schiffenbauer in his shorts and combat boots -- and get my political education as expounded from a microphone on the steps. Eldridge Cleaver, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Michael Rossman, Angela Davis, Frank Bardacke, Pete Camejo, Dolores Huerta – they were our teachers. With predictable frequency we’d tear-ass down Telegraph Avenue brandishing our anti-war placards or take on the Oakland Induction Center with shields made of garbage-can lids, and invariably we’d be met by the Berkeley Police, the Oakland Police, the National Guard, and/or the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, nicknamed The Blue Meanies for their blue-clad counterparts in Yellow Submarine.
I graduated in 1969 with a degree in social sciences, but by both academic curriculum and in-the-street practicum it was a degree in social revolution. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, which I figured meant that I had laid the ground for a career. Indeed I have spent my life exploring and elaborating on the theme.
The lessons of the movement were many and varied. One of my most memorable had to do with group mind. The insight came about not in the formality of social psychology class, but in the upheaval of the plaza. The summer after People’s Park thousands of energized students from elsewhere came pouring into Berkeley to get their credentials in social protest. In the presence of their innocence I saw that, through the years, our homegrown protoplasmic mass had forged a shared strategy for moving...
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October 21, 2008 - 12:14 PM
Melissa
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I remember being in school during the 1968 Baseball World Series in Detroit- the Tigers vs. the St. Louis Cardinals. We would hurry up to finish our assignments and then the teacher would roll in a black and white television into the classroom. Other classes would file in and we would watch the game until the end of the day. When school ended for the day, we would run home so we could catch the rest of the game. Gates Brown hit a grand slam at the end of one of the games and I thought that was just the greatest thing. I loved watching Willie Horton play, too. Bob Gibson was an awesome pitcher and I enjoyed watching him even though he was on the opposing team. We had an orange flag that read "Go Get 'em Tigers!" and I remember waving it as the whole neighborhood cheered when Detroit won the series. I was just a child at the time but that is a very vivid memory for me.
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