Liberation was a radical pacifist magazine published from 1956 to 1977 in the United States. A bimonthly and later a monthly,[1] it aligned itself with the 1960s New Left.[2]
 | |
| First issue | April 1956 |
|---|---|
| Final issue | 1977 |
| Based in | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0024-189X |
| OCLC | 856110 |
History
editLiberation: An Independent Monthly was founded, edited and published by David Dellinger, Bayard Rustin, Sidney Lens, Roy Finch, and A. J. Muste[3] out of New York City[4][5] and from a small anarchist community in Glen Gardner, New Jersey where Dellinger lived.[3] In the first issue, which appeared in April 1956,[6] the editors included a kind of mission statement titled "Tract for the Times"; it concluded with this paragraph:
Liberation will seek to inspire its readers not only to fresh thinking but to action now—refusal to run away or to conform, concrete resistance in the communities in which we live to all the ways in which human beings are regimented and corrupted, dehumanized and deprived of their freedom; experimentation in creative living by individuals, families, and groups; day to day support of movements to abolish colonialism and racism or for the freedom of all individuals from domination, whether military, economic, political, or cultural.[7]
Muste brought funding from the War Resisters League.[4][8] For Rustin, Liberation represented a major commitment of his time and energy as he worked to raise money and also was meeting regularly with Muste.[9] Rustin contacted Martin Luther King Jr. to encourage him to write for the magazine.[10] The June 1963 issue contained King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail", the first time it was printed in its entirety and under that title.[11][12]
The magazine's editorial positions were comparable to those of Studies on the Left.[13] Dellinger backed the 1959 Cuban Revolution (which caused a rift at the magazine and resulted in Roy Finch resigning as an editor[14]) and later published articles sympathetic to the Castro regime.[15] The magazine supported Students for a Democratic Society and opposed the Vietnam War.[16]
Liberation provided assistance to Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) organizers, and the magazine's editorial offices at times served as a clearinghouse for activists conducting non-violent resistance.[17]
Liberation occasionally ran investigative journalist pieces. In early 1965, it printed two long articles by Vincent Salandria challenging the Warren Commission's findings on the JFK assassination.[18][19] In 1975, the magazine published an exposé by Fred Landis, which accused the CIA of waging psychological warfare against Chile prior to the 1973 coup d'état.[20]
A poem by Louis Ginsberg, father of Allen Ginsberg, was published in Liberation.[21] Children's book author Vera Williams created the artwork for many of the covers.[22]
By 1977, Dellinger had moved on to launch a new magazine called Seven Days.[23] Liberation was being edited by Jan Edwards and Michael Nill out of Cambridge, Massachusetts,[24] but it ceased publication not long after Dellinger's departure.
Legacy
editLiberation, together with Dissent, anticipated changes in the 1950s-60s American political left, such as the early civil rights movement and the use of nonviolent protest.[25]
In 1965, Paul Goodman edited an anthology, Seeds of Liberation, that included a selection of editorials, articles, poems, and reviews from the magazine's first decade. In his Preface, Goodman noted how often the magazine had been prescient about trends, social movements, etc., stating at one point that "the 'news' has been catching up to Liberation".[26]
References
edit- ↑ Dunn, Alec (October 2024). "Hope in the Midst of Apathy: Liberation magazine and the covers of Vera Williams". Journal of Black Mountain College Studies. 15.
- ↑ Lynd & Grubačić 2008, pp. 39–41.
- 1 2 McReynolds, David (September 2004). "Remembering Dave Dellinger". Against the Current (112). Archived from the original on November 7, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
- 1 2 Tracy, James, ed. (1996). Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226811277.
- ↑ Epstein, Barbara (1991). Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s. University of California Press. p. 284. ISBN 0520914465. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
The best primary source for the history of radical pacifism in the forties and fifties is the journal Liberation, edited and published in New York by Dave Dellinger, Roy Finch, A. J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin.
- ↑ Hunt 2006, p. 113.
- ↑ Goodman, Paul, ed. (1965). "Tract for the Times". Seeds of Liberation. New York: George Braziller, Inc. p. 11. OCLC 394926.
- ↑ Kusch, Frank (2001). All American Boys: Draft Dodgers in Canada from the Vietnam War. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0275972684.
- ↑ D'Emilio, John (2003). Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0684827803.
- ↑ Burns, Stewart (1997). Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807846612.
- ↑ King Jr., Martin Luther (June 1963). "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Liberation. Vol. VIII, no. 4.
- ↑ "Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter From Birmingham Jail'". The Atlantic. February 2018. Besides its appearance in Liberation, King's letter was also printed that year in full or in part in the New York Post, The New Leader, The Christian Century, and in the August 1963 issue of The Atlantic magazine under the headline, "The Negro Is Your Brother".
- ↑ Lynd, Staughton; Grubačić, Andrej (2008). Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. PM Press. p. 36.
- ↑ Avrich 1995, p. 230.
- ↑ Dellinger, Dave (June 1964). "Cuba: Seven Thousand Miles from Home". Liberation. Reprinted in Paul Goodman's anthology, Seeds of Liberation (1965).
- ↑ Young, Nigel (1977). An Infantile Disorder?: The Crisis and Decline of the New Left. Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0710084675.
- ↑ Brick, Howard (2000). Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s. Cornell University Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0801487002.
- ↑ Salandria, Vincent J. (January 1965). "A Philadelphia Lawyer Analyzes the Shots, Trajectories, and Wounds". Liberation. A follow-up article, "A Philadelphia Lawyer Analyzes The President's Back and Neck Wounds", appeared in the March 1965 issue.
- ↑ DiEugenio, James (August 30, 2020). "Vincent Salandria: In Memorial". Kennedys and King.
- ↑ Landis, Fred (April 1975). "Psychological Warfare in Chile". Liberation – via Ann Arbor District Library.
- ↑ Ginsberg, Allen (September 2, 2008). The Letters of Allen Ginsberg. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-0786726011.
- ↑ "Vera Baker Williams Interview by Connie Bostic". BMCS. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
- ↑ Wolman, Jonathan (October 1, 1977). "Whatever happened to the Chicago 7?". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ Fulton, Lenard V., ed. (1977). International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses. Dustbooks. p. 174.
- ↑ Unger 1974, pp. 16–17.
- ↑ Goodman, Paul, ed. (1965). "Preface". Seeds of Liberation. New York: George Braziller, Inc. p. viii. OCLC 394926.
Bibliography
edit- Avrich, Paul (1995). Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691034126. OCLC 68772773.
- Hunt, Andrew E. (2006). David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 978-0814736388.
- Unger, Irwin (1974). The Movement: A History of the American New Left, 1959-1972. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 978-0060467265.
Further reading
edit- Chase, Edward T. (November 12, 1965). "Review of Seeds of Liberation". Commonweal. 83 (6): 194–195. ISSN 0010-3330 – via Gale Biography in Context.
- Goodman, Paul, ed. (1965). Seeds of Liberation. New York: George Braziller, Inc. OCLC 394926.
- Kopkind, Andrew (March 20, 1965). "The Politics of Avoiding Politics". The New Republic. Vol. 152, no. 12. pp. 20–22. ISSN 0028-6583. Review of Seeds of Liberation.
- Wagstaff, Thomas (1974). "Liberation". In Conlin, Joseph R. (ed.). The American Radical Press, 1880–1960. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 681–688. ISBN 0-8371-6625-X.