On the Fringe: Some American Radical Independents Quiz

Answer: Gus Hall

He lived from October 1910 to October 2000. Among other things, he was put in jail for eight years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentary. Reports claimed that Hall received as much as 2 million dollars from the Soviet Government. He finally opposed Gorbachev as leader in the USSR.

Answer: Paul Krassner

Five years after Lenny Bruce's death, Groucho Marx reportedly said to someone in 1971, 'I bet that in time Paul Krassner will be thought of as a living Lenny Bruce'.

Answer: Norman O. Brown

Brown was a true intellectual of mixed Cuban, Anglo-Irish descent. He had a way of writing which combined prose and poetry, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. He urged people of his time to accept life, and to accept as well the erotic in themselves. Once he even argued that people with schizophrenia might be saner than people deemed sane.

His thoughts often scandalized the proper. He lived from 1913-2002--through both World Wars and the turn into the new millenium.

Answer: William S. Burroughs

In many ways, he scorned the lives of the conventional and frequented instead the poor, those in the underworld. His most famous novel went on trial as "obscene"; in a landmark reversal, however, in 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided it was not obscene. Burroughs was quite a counterculture icon.

In his last years, he lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where he spent much time painting by spraying blank canvases with paint-loaded shot guns. His life and connections with people all over the world are fascinating.

His drug habit was nearly a constant. When he died in 1997, he was in a methadone program.

Answer: transformational grammar

Chomsky did a lot of work to demonstrate that all people have a knowledge of the structure of language which he called "universal grammar." He believed that every sentence has a "deep structure" and a "surface structure." His conclusions about the connections between the two have been called "transformational grammar." Chomsky, in his linguistics and in his politics, has always been a challenging figure.

In his politics, his opposition to American "capitalism" and to the Vietnam war are well known and much discussed.

Answer: The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan is associated with what is called the "Second Wave" of feminism. The First Wave centered around the women's right to vote. Friedan's focus is on what she thought of as a "myth" which falsely equated women with domesticity and passivity. The book came after Friedan noticed that she was frozen with fear at being alone.

She also became aware that in her life she didn't see many women as role models.

Answer: Carlos Castaneda

In March 1973 Castaneda was the subject of a cover article in "Time" cover article March 5, 1973 (Vol. 101 No. 10). The article described him as "an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a tortilla." Although Castaneda was born in Peru, he was a naturalized citizen of the United States and died in 1998 in Los Angeles.

Answer: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti was not only co-founder of the world famous bookstore, City Lights Bookstore; he was as well a painter and published poet, his major book being "A Coney Island of the Mind." He is famous for having visited Nagasaki, Japan, two weeks after the atom bomb fell, famous for his defense of and association with the Beats, for the "Howl" trial (after he had been arrested on charges of obscenity) and for his work in proposing and bringing to reality The Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco.

Answer: Mario Savio

This math and philosophy teacher famously said to a crowd of thousands near Sather Gate at the University of California campus, Berkeley, "There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all." http://www.savio.org/who_was_mario.html

Answer: Joan Baez

Joan Baez (Joan Chandos Baez) is said to have a three octave range which is an amazing reach, given the clarity and strength of all her tones. She always was part of freedom struggles and films of the 1960s show her singing with her long dark hair flowing (incidentally, she cut her hair in 1968). She has remained a very active performer, appearing with Bruce Springsteen, The Indigo Girls and John Mellencamp, among others. In 2003, she released "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar."

Joan Baez wrote, "All of us are survivors, "but how many of us transcend survival"? http://www.joanbaez.com/officialbio05.html

Answer: Saul Alinsky

This is a man who is considered an enormous influence in the grassroots kind of social organizing dominant in the 1960's and thereafter. He wanted to organize grassroots organizations which could have some power in the world. Book titles show his radical orientation: "Reveille for Radicals," and "Rules for Radicals" (his last book).

Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote her senior honors thesis on Alinsky at Wellesley College.

Answer: Mother Jones

Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) was called "the most dangerous woman in America" by a U. S. District Attorney.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/motherjones/Mother_Jones_Labor_Agitator.htm
She lived from August 1, 1837 - November 30, 1930. She fought for the rights of the United Mine Workers and was one of the founders of the IWW (the Wobblies). She tirelessly organized miners, miners' wives, everyone she could. She challenged people by telling them that if they didn't have the courage to stand up for themselves, she would do the job.
She would arm miners' wives with brooms and mops to keep "scabs" (strike breakers) from breaking the strike. Later in her life, she wrote a very engaging autobiography of her unusual life.

Answer: Samuel Gompers

Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor and was its president almost consecutive from 1886 to 1924. He was in favor of positive relations among craft unions, and he was opposed to the industrial unionism which later would become associated with the CIO. He was opposed to unrestricted immigration and against political radicalism.
There is a USS Navy Destroyer named the USS Samuel Gompers in his honor.

Answer: Sacco and Vanzetti

Their trial has become synonymous with what people call "antiradical and racist hysteria" of the time. Although they were immigrants and anarchists, their trial and execution drew an immense outcry from a huge number of people who thought their trial was shamelessly political and that they were unjustly convicted.
http://saccoandvanzetti.org/sn_prepublish2.php?section=DOCUMENTS

Some voices liken their execution as a symbol of intolerance and bigotry.
J. Edgar Hoover became the head of the General Intelligence Bureau of Investigation on August 1, 1919.

Answer: Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan is famous for elevating dance to a position it once held in classical times. She was born in San Francisco in 1878 and died in Nice, France in 1927 when her scarf got caught in the wheels of the Bugatti in which she was riding. From the beginning, she believed in it was essential to "listen to the music with your soul." http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/dunc-isa.htm
Her dancing and her life were passionate.
She went to Moscow to set up a dance school thinking that she would be financially supported. However, she found that after the Russian Revolution she would not get that support, and she returned finally to Europe.

Answer: CIO

In 1935 John L. Lewis formed what would become The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Initially, the CIO had such successful organizing methods that they seriously challenged the dominance of the AFL. By 1955 it had millions of members. By this time, however, the CIO was torn apart by internal divisions and problems with its left-wing leadership. The two powerful groups--AFL and CIO--merged in 1955.

"The CIO's actual membership (as opposed to publicity figures) was 2,850,000 for February 1942. This included 537,000 members of the UAW, just under 500,000 Steel Workers, almost 300,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, about 180,000 Electrical Workers, and about 100,000 Rubber Workers. The CIO also included 550,000 members of the United Mine Workers, which did not formally withdraw from the CIO until later in the year. The remaining membership of 700,000 was scattered among thirty-odd smaller unions." (Galenson, p. 585)

Answer: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Millay lived from 1892 to 1950. The content of her poetry and the style of her life were very radical for the times she lived in. In form, however, her poems were considered to be old fashioned--they were sonnets and they rhymed. Millay did not form part of 'official' Modernist avant-garde groups.

She was associated with Greenwich Village writers and strongly defended Sacco-Vanzetti. She is said to have died on a staircase in her house with a glass of wine in her hand, while she was translating classical poetry.

Answer: Greenwich Village

"The Village", as people call it, is located on the west side in downtown Manhattan. It is a great area for walking and a great area for radical artists, thinkers and bohemians to work in. Some of the greats that have lived and worked there include Eugene O'Neill, Isadora Duncan, Floyd Dell, Marcel Duchamp, Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac.

Answer: The Weathermen

The Weathermen, who became later The Weather Underground, were a group of radicals in the late 1960's who came to believe there was no way to make a change except by taking direct (and often violent) action. They began in 1969 in Chicago and started to disintegrate by 1976. Their methods were focussed on bombing and random violent acts. In the 70's the FBI infiltrated their groups, and some active Weathermen fled underground, some for decades. Many finally turned themselves in.
Bernardine Dohrn was one of the original signers of their original manifesto .

Answer: Norman Mailer

Beat poetry is identified with San Francisco in particular in the 1950's. This poetry is in free verse generally and writes openly of issues others never considered poetic. The word "beat" has various meanings: 1) "exhausted," 2) "uplifted" or "beatific" and 3) "upbeat." Some of the poets associated with it are Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Diane De Prima, Anne Waldman.

The literary concept Beats developed into the social group "Beatniks."

Answer: Huey Newton

The Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. It was active in from the middle 1960's to the 1970's. Its initial purpose was to protect African American people from the police (the 'pigs') or other aggression.
On the one hand, they conducted programs which helped feed people in the "neighborhoods"; at the same time, they were televised with black berets and weapons. By the later 1960's, they had a membership of about 4,000 to 6,000 people.
The group's thinking was often homophobic and sexist. The comments of Eldrige Cleaver demonstrate this. Eldridge Cleaver and his wife Kathleen were well known members of the Panthers, as was the dramatic Stokeley Carmichael.

Answer: Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie, "The Dust Bowl Troubadour," lived from 1912-1967. He travelled the country with workers during the Great Depression in the 1930's to learn their music and their ways of living. Many report that his guitar displayed the following logo: "This Machine Kills Fascists." Some of his songs include "This Land is Your Land," "Goodnight Little Darlin,'" and "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You."

Answer: Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman was born in 1936 and died in 1989 of a drug overdose. He was the co-founder of the Yippie Movement (along with Jerry Rubin) or a group of anti-war people also called the Youth International Party. Hoffman became known as one of the Chicago Seven, (there were eight originally with Bobby Seale) charged with trying to start a riot at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968.

After a true media circus trial, he was acquitted, then wrote a book called "Steal This Book" (1971) and spent the rest of his life erratically, in and out of jail until finally he was found dead of a huge overdose of phenobarbital. Hoffman is famous for writing various books earlier, including the much quoted "Woodstock Nation" and "Revolution for the Hell of it."

Answer: Bayard Ruskin

Bayard Ruskin lived from 1910 to 1987. He helped organize the 1941 March on Washington. He said, "It wasn't the Harry Belafontes and the greats from Hollywood that made the march. What made the march was that black people voted that day with their feet". http://creativequotations.com/one/2326.htm.

Bayard Rustin was a gay man, whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked to help him organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington.

Answer: Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey was born in Colorado in 1935. He was the author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1965) and also a visible part of counter culture in the 1960s with his group of colorfully dressed people he named the Merry Pranksters. The "Pranksters" would appear at all kinds of social and cultural events. Kesey met the famous Timothy Leary, had parties Kesey called "acid tests." His second novel was "Sometimes A Great Notion." His last piece of writing came in his call for peace after September 11, 2001. Kesey's life was a perpetual teasing/testing of the nature of reality: for instance, he faked his own suicide in 1965.