Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Remembering Ramparts

Agitator Journalism

http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs09042009.html

By RON JACOBS
September 4-6, 2009

Many folks oriented toward the New Left in the 1960s and early 1970s
have a story or two about Ramparts magazine. I personally discovered
the periodical in a bookstore magazine rack in College Park, MD in
late 1969. I was with a couple friends from high school. The
November antiwar protests were over. My friends were buying some
books for school and I was reading MAD magazine when I noticed the
Ramparts cover. It featured Yippie Jerry Rubin wearing a bandolier
and waving a gun. One of the featured articles was about the Pigasus
campaign for president--a pointed spoof by the Yippies and others of
the US presidential campaign in 1968. When my friends were ready to
go, I purchased the issue along with a copy of Herman Hesse's
Steppenwolf and the latest issue of the local underground Quicksilver
Times. A couple days later, I found out that the older brother of
another friend of mine had several issues of Ramparts. Whenever I
went to his house, I caught up on my reading while listening to his
rock and roll collection.

Ramparts was a unique magazine in the annals of US
publishing. Flashy, irreverent and replete with quality muckraking
and commentary, it represented the unaffiliated segment of the
antiwar and antiracist movements of the period. Originally begun as
a liberal Catholic monthly in the early 1960s, by 1966 it was well on
its way to being the primary journal read by those movement's
adherents. A big reason for its popularity and journalistic success
was its early editorial leadership of Edward Keating and Warren
Hinckle and the dynamics between the two men. Never truly financial
successful, Ramparts challenged the mainstream magazine culture of
Time and Life while publishing articles quoted and referred to by
establishment heavies like The New York Times.

Peter Richardson, editorial director of PoliPoint Press, has recently
published a history of the magazine. The only such history, A Bomb
In Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine
Changed America, does a worthy job of documenting the important
moments in Ramparts history. He tells about its gradual shift from
the liberal Catholic magazine envisioned by its founder to a radical
journal championing the left wing of the antiwar movement and the
Black liberation movement. Focused primarily on the years when
Hinckle and Keating ran the magazine's office, Richardson describes
Hinckle's fundraising adventures, his flamboyant and outrageous
style, the editorial debates over certain stories and the effect
some of those stories had on fundraising and their targets. He also
discusses the reaction of the US government and its agencies to
Ramparts stories like the 1967 piece on CIA funding of the National
Student Association and other supposedly independent
organizations. Richardson details the arrival of Eldridge Cleaver on
the Ramparts staff, examines the magazine's role in the antiwar
movement and looks at its response to the growing feminist movement
of the period.

Running behind Richardson's narrative about the magazine's editorial
direction is another narrative about money. Rarely if ever showing a
profit, Ramparts managed to publish for thirteen years. According
to Richardson, much of this was due to Hinckle's fundraising
efforts. Also, according to Richardson, it was Hinckle who spent a
good deal of the money. The magazine actually closed down for a
couple months in the winter of 1968-1969. When it came back to life
it was run by two new leftists who eventually become mad-dog
rightists: David Horowitz and Peter Collier. It was this incarnation
of the magazine that I was most familiar with. Indeed, my
subscription ran from 1970 until the magazine's demise in 1975. Like
the New Left itself, the Ramparts of this period reflected the
ultra-radical sentiments of the period. It also attempted to address
women's issues in a genuinely non-sexist manner. Like the
Hinckle-Keating creation, Ramparts under Horowitz and Collier
continued to attract topnotch writers, despite its inability to pay
well or at all.

If there is a fault with Richardson's book, it would be his obsession
with the relationship of the Black Panther Party to Ramparts. If
anything, he over dramatizes the relationship while also overplaying
it. One assumes that this is the result of his discussions with the
aforementioned David Horowitz-- neocon organizer and Panther
hater. This obsession tends to distract from the overall evenness of
the book and lends more credibility to Horowitz than he
deserves. Despite this detraction, A Bomb In Every Issue is an
important addition to the history of the period known as the Sixties
and a worthwhile read. It serves as a reminder of the powerful
possibilities of the printed word and an inspiration to those of us
who believe that journalism can be entertaining, intelligent and
threaten the status quo.
--

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the
Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs'
essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on
music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short
Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at:
rjacobs3625@charter.net

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