FISTS & FLOWERS

Hertzberg presents a revelatory collection of revolutionary flyers from the years 1963 to 1973.

The 1960s are often defined as one of the most tumultuous decades in American history, and the author makes it clear that it was a unique era when multiple movements rose up against the status quo like never before. The author—a former member of the Students for a Democratic Society, the Congress of Racial Equality, and other organizations—categorizes them into sometimes disparate but overlapping movements, carefully examining each in turn. They include “Civil Rights and Black Power,” “Women’s Liberation,” “Gay Rights and Sexual Freedom,” “Opposition to the War in Vietnam,” and “Ecology and the Environment,” among others. What unites each of these strains of revolutionary thought is their extensive use of printed leaflets to upset the powers-that-be and spur people into action: “Leaflets, in their authenticity, directness, and spontaneity, help to reveal some of the discrete actions and activities that exemplify and characterize the multi-faceted, overlapping movements of the Sixties.” The raw power and force of these printed leaflets is stunning, such as one featuring a photo of a child with napalm burns, reading “We Are Burning Children in Vietnam.” Another flyer from the San Francisco-based “Sexual Freedom League” reads “Clothed or Nude: We Are Not Obscene.” The author is also keen on stressing how pamphlets, flyers, handbills, and the like were primary tools of communication and organizing, and often had to be hand-cranked into existence. The passion and urgency of each leaflet is palpable, and the author’s scholarly analysis of content and context does much to shed light on a bygone medium. Although these works, and what went into producing them, may strike some younger readers as archaic, this book makes the case that issues they addressed could not be more relevant today. Social-media platforms may have largely supplanted leafletting on street corners and college campuses, but the threats of war, totalitarianism, and iniquity remain.

A vital piece of cultural archeology.