People's Movements, People's Press : The Journalism Of Social Justice Movements

People’s Movements, People’s Press People’s Movements, People’s Press the journalism of social justice movements Bob Ostertag Beacon Press, Boston beacon press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the unitarian universalist association of congregations. © 2006 by the Independent Press Association All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992. Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Ostertag, Bob People’s movements, people’s press: the journalism of social justice movements / Bob Ostertag. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn o-8070-6164-6 (alk. paper) 1. Underground press—United States—History—20th century. 2. Underground press— United States—History—19th century. 3. Social problems—Press coverage—United States. 4. Social justice—United States. I. Title. PN4888.U5O88 2006 071'.30904—dc22 2005031735 For a particular aspiring young social justice activist and journalist Contents Introduction 1 The Nineteenth Century 23 abolitionists and woman suffragists The Gay and Lesbian Press 72 The Underground GI Press and the Vietnam War 117 The Environmental Movement 161 A Note from the Independent Press Association 191 Author’s Note 194 Notes 196 Index 219 Introduction For the last two centuries, Americans whose concerns and interests lay outside the accepted political boundaries of the day have organized social movements as the principal vehicle for advancing their cause. Their journals have been their most important tool and have been applied to almost every task these movements undertook. The history of social movements and the history of their press are often nearly inseparable, and historians frequently peg the birth of a social movement to the founding of the movement’s first journal. It is therefore surprising that the history of the social movement press has been studied so little.1 I suspect this is largely due to the fact that when judged by the standards typically used to assess the importance of mainstream publications—total circulation, advertising revenue, length of book, longevity, “professionalism,” “objectivity,” and “lack of bias”—social movement publications appear to have been of negligible importance. Yet even the most cursory review of the social movement press reveals the mistake of judging it by these standards. It is my contention that the history of social movement journalism can be understood only in the context of the particular movements of which each journal was a part: its internal dynamics and strategies, 1 introduction its relation with its immediate adversary, its relation with the state, and its location in the broader culture (for example, the constitution of “abolitionists” as the predominant voice against slavery, the direct conflict between abolitionists and Southern slaveholders, the complex relation between abolitionists and the federal government, and the place of abolitionism in the broader culture, particularly in the North). Each of these four components is highly dynamic; together, they create a context of continuous change. As a result of this fluidity, there is no schematic framework that can simplify the analysis of social movement dynamics. Therefore, there is no substitute for a nuanced and detailed historical analysis of the social movement press in the context of the movement of which it is a part. Conventional measures of a journal’s importance, such as circulation, financial stability, and longevity, may—or may not—be meaningful indicato