Antiwar Movement History and Jerry Rubin Yippie Media Activism from 1966 to 1973

Jerry Rubin Counterculture Activism Protest

Photograph

Rubin, Jerry, Yippie press photograph and article archive, 1966 to 1973, documents the countercultural antiwar communication system that linked street theater, press photography, radical publishing, and courtroom politics during the Vietnam War era. The material shows the mechanisms of Yippie activism through public performance, circulated news images, published movement correspondence, and legal defense activity, providing primary-source evidence for the study of antiwar organizing, New Left media strategy, draft resistance, and the Chicago Seven prosecutions.

Archive of four press photographs and two New York Review of Books issues or excerpts, 1966 to 1973. The photographic group includes an early 1966 image of Rubin dressed as a British redcoat with a placard reading, “I wear this uniform because my country was born in revolution. Today American uses blitzkrieg bombing with jelly gasoline to destroy the Vietnamese revolution. Our soldiers have become the redcoats of the world.” Other images include a 1968 photograph identifying Rubin as “one of the Seven,” a close view of Rubin speaking with a Hoffa for President pin on his lapel and cigarette in hand, and a 1973 photograph of Rubin with attorneys Leonard Weinglass and William Kunstler during proceedings connected to contempt charges. The printed material consists of eight pages from The New York Review of Books: Rubin’s “An Emergency Letter to My Brothers and Sisters in the Movement,” published in the February 13, 1969 issue, and “An Exchange on Resistance,” a dialogue between Mitchell Goodman and Rubin in the April 10, 1969 issue concerning revolutionary strategy, draft resistance, and the movement role of the middle class. (nybooks.com, nybooks.com)

The archive is especially useful because it documents both outward-facing Yippie spectacle and internal movement debate. Rubin and Abbie Hoffman helped make antiwar protest deliberately theatrical, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations led to the federal Chicago Eight prosecution, later reduced to the Chicago Seven after Bobby Seale’s case was severed. Federal judicial history records the trial and later contempt proceedings as central episodes in the confrontation between 1960s radicalism and the courts. (fjc.gov) Light handling wear to photographs and printed excerpts; overall very good. A compact but substantial archive linking Vietnam-era protest performance, radical print culture, and the legal machinery used against New Left activists.

Item #19148

Price: $480.00