Table of Contents

The Portable Sixties Reader - Edited with an Introduction by Ann Charters Preface
The Sixties: A Chronology
Part One: Struggling to Be Free: The Civil Rights Movement
JAMES BALDWIN - "The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King"
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. - "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
ROSA PARKS - from Rosa Parks: My Story
ANNE MOODY - from Coming of Age in Mississippi
EUDORA WELTY - "Where Is the Voice Coming From?"
CALVIN TRILLIN - "The March"
BOB DYLAN - "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
DUDLEY RANDALL - "Ballad of Birmingham"
ROBERT LOWELL - "For the Union Dead"
MALCOLM X - "The Ballot or the Bullet"
ALICE WALKER - "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?"
CHARLES JOHNSON - from Dreamer
Part Two: End It! And End It Now!: The Anti-Vietnam Movement
THOMAS MERTON - "Original Child Bomb"
SUSAN SONTAG - "What's Happening in America (1966)"
DENISE LEVERTOV - "Life at War"
"Overheard over S. E. Asia"
ROBERT BLY - "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last"
DAVID LANCE GOINES - "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie"
ANN CHARTERS - "How to Maintain a Peaceful Demonstration"
NORMAN MAILER - from The Armies of the Night: "A Confrontation by the River"
ROBERT CHATAIN - from "On the Perimeter"
MICHAEL HERR - from Dispatches
TIM O'BRIEN - "The Man I Killed"
RON KOVIC - from Born on the Fourth of July
JANICE MIRIKITANI - "Attack the Water"
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA - "Tunnels"
"Hanoi Hannah"
"'You and I Are Disappearing'"
"2527th Birthday of the Buddha"
"Prisoners"
"Nude Interrogation"
"Facing It"
Part Three: Why Can We Not Begin Anew? The Free Speech Movement and Beyond
DAVE MANDEL - "Battle of Berkeley Talking Blues"
LEE FELSENSTEIN - "Put My Name Down"
RICHARD KAMPF - "Hey Mr. Newsman"
DAN PAIK - "There's a Man Taking Names"
RICHARD SCHMORLEITZ AND DAN PAIK - "I Walked Out in Berkeley"
DAVID LANCE GOINES - from The Free Speech Movement
"The Rules of the Game... When You're Busted"
"Wanted: Hip Cops"
ALLEN GINSBERG - "Demonstration or Spectacle as Example, as Communication - or How to Make a March/Spectacle"
HUNTER THOMPSON - from Hell's Angels: "The Dope Cabala and a Wall of Fire"
KAY BOYLE - "Testament for My Students, 1968-1969"
ANDREW GORDON - "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir"
DONALD BARTHELME - "The Police Band"
ABBIE HOFFMAN - "Che's Last Letter"
WILLAM S. BURROUGHS - "The Coming of the Purple Better One"
EDWARD SANDERS - "Yeats in the Gas"
Part Four: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die": The Counterculture Movement
COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD - "I Feel Like I'm Fixin'-to-Die Rag"
"Talking Non-Violence"
"Superbird"
"Janis"
DOUGLAS BLAZEK - "THE little PHENOMENA"
EMMETT GROGAN - from Ringolevio
R. G. DAVIS - "A Minstrel Show or: Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel"
SALLY TOMLINSON - "Psychedelic Rock Posters: History, Ideas, and Art"
MICHAEL LYDON - "The Rolling Stones - At Play in the Apocalypse"
ROBERT HUNTER - "New Speedway Boogie"
SHERMAN ALEXIE - "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock"
Part Five: Adrift in the Age of Aquarius: Drugs and the Movement into Inner Space
TIMOTHY LEARY - "Turning On the World"
DIANE DI PRIMA - "The Holidays at Millbrook - 1966"
CARLOS CASTANEDA - from The Teachings of Don Juan
N. SCOTT MOMADAY - from House Made of Dawn
KEN KESEY - "Letters from Mexico"
LENNY BRUCE - "Pills and Shit: The Drug Scene"
JIM CARROLL - from The Basketball Diaries
Part Six: Living in the Revolution: The Beats and Some Other Literary Movements at the Edge
CHARLES OLSON - "The Hustings"
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI - Letters to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky, 1961-1962
ALLEN GINSBERG - "Kral Majales"
DIANE DI PRIMA - "Revolutionary Letters #1, 3, 5, 8"
GARY SNYDER - "Poke Hole Fishing After the March"
MICHAEL MCCLURE - from Ghost Tantras
BOB KAUFMAN - "Grandfather Was Queer, Too"
JOHN CLELLON HOLMES - "Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook"
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN - "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard"
CHARLES BUKOWSKI - from Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Part Seven: Out of the Fire: The Black Arts Movement and the Reshaping of Black Consciousness
LARRY NEAL - "The Black Arts Movement"
DON L. LEE - from Think Black 1965-1967
HAKI R. MADHUBUTI - "Malcolm Spoke/who listened?"
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT - "The Idea of Ancestry"
AL YOUNG - "Conjugal Visits"
"A Dance for Ma Rainey"
NIKKI GIOVANNI - "My Poem"
CAROLYN M. RODGERS - "It Is Deep"
AMIRI BARAKA - "Numbers, Letters"
ISHMAEL REED - "Eldridge Cleaver - Writer"
ALLEN POLITE - "Song"
"Why They Are in Europe?"
["We Knew Our Loneliness and Told It"]
Part Eight: With Our Arms Upraised: The Women's Movement and the Sexual Revolution
BETTY FRIEDAN - from The Feminine Mystique
KATE MILLETT - from Sexual Politics
MURIEL RUKEYSER - "Poem"
SYLVIA PLATH - "Lady Lazarus"
ANNE SEXTON - "The Abortion"
"The Addict"
"The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator"
DENISE LEVERTOV - "About Marriage"
"The Mutes"
DIANE WAKOSKI - "Belly Dancer"
"Ringles"
HETTIE JONES- from How I Became Hettie Jones
VALERIE SOLANAS - from SCUM Manifesto
GLORIA STEINEM - "A New Egalitarian Life Style"
Part Nine: In Defense of the Earth: The Environmental Movement
RACHEL CARSON - from Silent Spring
PETER MATTHIESSEN - from Wildlife in America
DIANE DI PRIMA - "Revolutionary Letter #16"
GARY SNYDER - "What You Should Know to Be a Poet"
"Revolution in the Revolution in the Revolution"
"Smokey the Bear Sutra"
LEW WELCH - "Preface to Hermit Poems, The Bath"
["I Know a Man's Supposed to Have His Hair Cut Short"]
["Apparently Wasps"]
["I Burn Up the Deer in My Body"]
["Step Out onto the Planet"]
"The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings"
WENDELL BERRY - "To the Unseeable Animal"
EDWARD ABBEY - "The Serpents of Paradise"
N. SCOTT MOMADAY - from The Way to Rainy Mountain
Part Ten: Ten Elegies for the Sixties
for Ernest Hemingway: ARCHIBALD MACLEISH - "Hemingway"
for Marilyn Monroe: MICHAEL MCCLURE - from Ghost Tantras, #39
for John F. Kennedy: ERIC VON SCHMIDT - "Kennedy Blues"
for Sylvia Plath: JOHN BERRYMAN - from The Dream Songs, #172
for Malcolm X: ETHERIDGE KNIGHT - "The Sun Came"
for Martin Luther King, Jr.: DON L. LEE - "Assassination"
for Robert F. Kennedy: LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI - "Assassination Raga"
for Neal Cassady: ALLEN GINSBERG - "On Neal's Ashes"
for Janis Joplin: MARILYN HACKER - "Elegy"
for Jack Kerouac: The Harvard Crimson - "Kerouac, 1922-1969"
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Alphabetical List of Authors and Titles

About the Author

Ann Charters, a Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation scholar, is professor of American Literature emerita at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. in 1966, she worked with Kerouac to compile his bibliography, and was the only biographer who interviewed him about the circumstances in which he wrote his books. She is the author of his first biography, Kerouac, in 1973. She edited his posthumous poetry collection, Scattered Poems. She is also the editor of numerous books on Beat and other literature, including The Portable Beat Reader, The Portable Sixties Reader, Beat Down to Your Soul, The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader, and two volumes of Kerouac’s Selected Letters.