Alternatives Library Collection

While the label "underground newspaper" was long used to describe the publications of resistance groups in totalitarian societies, it was repurposed in the mid 1960s by activists in the US and other countries who published radical and countercultural tabloid-format weeklies and monthlies. The interactive maps below show more than 2,600 underground, alternative, and other kinds of unorthodox publications from the decade between 1965 and 1975.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the underground press served that same purpose, giving voice to marginalized groups and helping them build stronger communities.

The explosion of small publications alongside the political upheaval—the latter of which is documented in a companion collection, Student Activism—is not a coincidence. Historically, an alternative press has thrived when social movements are most active. Political organizing gives the alternative press more material to write about. The movements also produce more readers for such outlets: in politically charged times, more people are open to new ideas and question established news sources.

On August 13, 1965 Max Scherr launched the Berkeley Barb, one of the earliest and most influential underground newspapers to serve the civil rights, anti-war, and countercultural movements. Scherr, a hands-on publisher, relied on a mostly young, Leftist staff, which helped produce and sell the Barb. For 15 years the Barb, as its name suggests, critiqued and needled the “establishment” becoming a voice for a generation looking to change the world.

The Scab Sheet is a student activist publication at OSU. Originally published in 1969-1970, a group of students revived it in 2017 after a near 50-year gap. The fact that students deliberately resurrected this important and storied student publication suggests that students still believe this particular name and outlet have value.

New England Free Press was a movement printer and publisher from 1967 to 1981. Of the more than 400 titles we published, about a third focused on women's liberation. Taken together, these articles—by such writers as Marge Piercy, Angela Davis, Betsy Warrior, Roxanne Dunbar, Barbara Ehrenreich, Isaac Asimov and Priscilla Long—form a treasury of feminist thinking from that time.

The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was a lesbian organization founded in 1955 in San Francisco by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon for the purpose of self-knowledge and self-acceptance, public education, involvement in research, and lobbying to change the laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Over 75 magazines, newsletters, and newspapers created by activists and collectives that helped propel the second wave of feminism from the late sixties and early seventies through the end of the 20th century.

Shameless Hussy Press was founded by Alta Gerrey in Oakland in 1969 and was the first feminist press in the United States. Shameless Hussy is responsible for publishing over fifty titles including the first books by four women who would later become internationally prominent feminist writers: Pat Parker, Mitsuye Yamada, Ntozake Shange, and Susan Griffin.

Synergy Magazine Index for 1967-71. Synergy was published monthly by the Bay Area Reference Center (BARC). It began in 1967 as a four page mimeographed newsletter, it grew into an award winning periodical as a vehicle of communication from BARC with libraries around the country. The last issue of Synergy was published in Winter 1973.

For the first time, this book compiles original documents from Science for the People, the most important radical science movement in U.S. history. Between 1969 and 1989, Science for the People mobilized American scientists, teachers, and students to practice a socially and economically just science, rather than one that served militarism and corporate profits. Through research, writing, protest, and organizing, members sought to demystify scientific knowledge and embolden “the people” to take science and technology into their own hands.

Marxism needed a cocoon, an archive—to measure its validity in totality, and to give it rebirth amid the shattering of the Soviet style “Marxism-Leninism”. The puzzle was vast, challenging, almost unbreakable. So much information to reconcile—so many contradictions to explain. What did Marx really say? Did Lenin support Stalinism by talking about the need for a dictatorship of workers? Is Marxism pro-freedom and pro-democracy? Who was Trotsky, and what significance does he have to Marxism? Was the Soviet Union entirely corrupt, backwards, and a failure or did it do some things constructively and healthy? In 1990, battling the onslaught of misinformation, a worker named Zodiac started the task of archiving Marxism, piece by piece.

The GI Press Series was developed in collaboration with the GI Press Project. It is one of the most comprehensive collections of digitized GI underground newspapers and newsletters from the Vietnam War era ever compiled. Adding to the value of the series is its placement in the context of the hundreds of other underground press publications published during the same period.

a New Left, anti-war underground press news agency that distributed news bulletins and photographs to hundreds of subscribing underground, alternative and radical newspapers from 1967 to 1981.

Clamor Magazine existed as a movement publication from 1999 to 2006. For many activists, this was a formative period in our lives, including the Seattle WTO protests, September 11, and the Bush Administration. We printed work from over 800 writers, artists, and photographers.

The Organization of North American Indian Students at Northern Michigan University founded the Nishnawbe News newspaper in 1971. It quickly gained the reputation of being one of the leading Native-American-run newspapers in the country, and its circulation eventually grew to more than 8,000, with issues sent worldwide. In just two years, the Nishnawbe News would grow into the second largest Indian publication in North America, receiving national acclaim in publications like The New York Times and Time magazine.

Native American
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an increase of Native American activism and the rise of "Red Power" as an activist movement demanding greater educational and economic opportunities and tribal rights. At the same time, U.S. policy toward Native American tribes provided greater opportunities for indigenous people to manage local government and local issues. This led to the establishment of an active Native American press, with publications like NARP Newsletter, Many Smokes, and Native Movement, that championed such key issues as Native American rights, religious freedom, equal education, and preserving community, language and tribal sovereignty.

The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service was a weekly periodical with national and international distribution. It was published for 13 years, starting in 1967, and was sometimes called the Black Panther Black Community News Service or the Black Panther Community News Service. In its heyday, the Party sold several hundred thousand copies of the newspaper per week.

Black Maria was an American feminist magazine from Chicago, Illinois. Established in 1971 by Donna Ippolito, Marge Everett, Karen Ney, and Kathy Rowley, the magazine devoted their publications on feminist journalism, essays on controversial topics, and lesbian writing. Describing itself as a "feminist journal of art and politics,"[1] their content also included book reviews, biographies, and interviews.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an important milestone in the effort to achieve equality and autonomy for African Americans. In the decades that followed, Black Power, the Black Arts Movement, Black Nationalism, Separatism, and Black Feminism emerged as movements and grew in influence.

The LGBT collection contains 25 publications that chronicle the birth of the Gay and Lesbian movements in the United States. The gay liberation movement of the 1970s saw political action explode through the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, the election of openly gay and lesbian representatives, and the first march on Washington for gay rights in 1979.

The Chicano press was an important component of the Chicano Movement to disseminate Chicano history, literature, and current news. The press created a link between the core and the periphery to create a national Chicano identity and community.

The more than 150 little magazines represented in Independent Voices provide a fertile ground for exploring this vast range of biographical, bibliographic, historical, cultural, and genetic scholarship and creativity.