The New York Times reports that the University of Texas has paid $300,000 to acquire the papers of the late Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Yippees and disrupter of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Some of the items from the collection – including letters from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, notes from Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer – will go on display today, following a ceremony at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
I only met Abbie Hoffman once, at the YMCA cafeteria in downtown Chicago, shortly before the Battle of the Hilton at 1968 Democratic Convention. He was sitting quietly and not attracting much attention, quite unlike the public persona he developed for anti-war demonstrations, and later at the Conspiracy Eight (and then Seven) trial. Coincidentally, the Northwestern Pritzker Law School has recently mounted an exhibit of courtroom drawings from the Conspiracy Trial, which began fifty years ago this month.
Hoffman took some grief following the 1968 publication of his first book, Revolution for the Hell of It, which was released by a commercial imprint and sold in "establishment" book store (although under the pseudonym "Free.") He made up for it in 1971 with Steal This Book, which was rejected by every mainstream house and eventually published by Hoffman himself.
Abbott Howard Hoffman was born in November 1936, meaning that he was almost 32 in August 1968, far older than most of the youthful demonstrators (I was only 19), and an improbable avatar of the youth counterculture. Unsurprisingly, Hoffman had been fairly unadventurous during his own teens and early twenties, given that those were the 1950s. I found this sentence in the Times report pretty interesting, describing Hoffman's own student days at Brandeis: "He came to the school as a relatively conventional student, wearing a jacket and tie, winning spots on the tennis and wrestling teams, even becoming the tennis team’s captain."
Wait . . . . Brandeis had a wrestling team? Actually, there have been many left-wing high school and college wrestlers, including Paul Wellstone and Al Franken, and me (high school only).
More information on Northwestern's Conspiracy Trial exhibit, and the trial itself, after the jump.
New Exhibit on the Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial
This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the country’s most controversial cases, the Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial.
In late August 1968, the city hosted the Democratic National Convention at the International Amphitheatre, which was located on the south side. This was a tumultuous time in America; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert “Bobby” Kennedy had been assassinated that same year, and the country was in the middle of a very controversial war in Vietnam.
Activists saw the Democratic National Convention as an opportunity to protest the War and their leaders. They filed for permits to protest in the city’s parks, but most were denied; instead, they were granted one rally at Grant Park and an 11 o’clock nightly curfew. Because of these restrictions, riots erupted in the parks and the streets, leading to violence between the police and protestors.
Sixteen men were held responsible for this disaster: eight police officers and eight protestors. None of the police officers received any punishment—either their charges were dropped or they were cleared in court. The protestors, on the other hand, had became co-defendants in a long, messy trial.
This exhibit presents the chaos of the Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial through the lens of three courtroom sketch artists: Andy Austin, Franklin McMahon, and Verna Sadock. Each has a unique artistic style that brings to life the characters and events that ensued.
Special thanks to Andy Austin, Robert Hirsch, Margot McMahon, and the Chicago History Museum for their contributions. This exhibit will be on display for the next several months on the third floor of the Pritzker Legal Research Center.
If you have any questions, please contact Brittany Adams, the Special Collections, Digitization, and Archival Services Librarian.
The Woodstock Abbie Hoffman incident:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-who-vs-abbie-hoffman_b_250883
Posted by: John Curtayne | October 29, 2019 at 12:42 PM