Liberation (magazine)


Liberation Magazine was a bimonthly, later a monthly, magazine identified in the 1960s with the New Left.

History

Liberation was founded, published, and edited by David Dellinger, Bayard Rustin, Sidney Lens, Roy Finch, and A. J. Muste out of New York City and Glen Gardner, New Jersey. Muste brought funding from the War Resisters League. For Rustin, the magazine was a major commitment of time and energy, raising money and meeting every week with Muste. He wrote to Martin Luther King, Jr., who later wrote for the magazine. The June 1963 issue contained the first full publication of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and the first version with that title
The editorial positions of the magazine were somewhat comparable to those of Dissent and Studies on the Left. Editorially, Liberation supported the Cuban Revolution, and published C. Wright Mills' article "Listen, Yankee!" ; support for SDS and opposition to the Vietnam War; and support for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
The magazine supported Fellowship of Reconciliation organizers, and its editorial offices at times served as a clearinghouse for activists conducting non-violent resistance.
Liberation occasionally ran investigative pieces. In early 1965, the magazine ran long articles by Vincent Salandria challenging the conclusions of the Warren Commission. In 1975 it published an article by Fred Landis on psychological warfare by the CIA in Chile.
A poem by Louis Ginsberg, father of Allen Ginsberg, was published in the magazine. Children's book author Vera Williams made the artwork for many of the covers.
By 1977 the magazine was edited by Jan Edwards and Michael Nill out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It ceased publication not long after the departure of Dellinger.