The American countercultural press of the 1960s drew inspiration from predecessors that had begun in the 1950s, such as the Village Voice and Paul Krassner’s satirical paper The Realist. Arguably, the first underground newspaper of the 1960s was the Los Angeles Free Press, or ‘Freep’ as it became known, founded in 1964. For 10 years after the assassination of JFK in 1963, the LA Free Press helped to establish the era’s political, social and spiritual agendas. These newspapers varied greatly in visual style, content, and even in basic concept — and emerged from very different kinds of communities. Advocating personal freedom, some were militantly political while others featured highly spiritual content and were graphically sophisticated and adventuresome. In the late 60s, a number of underground papers grew more militant and began to openly discuss armed revolution against the state. Because of their coverage of the Vietnam War and how they became a touchstone for the anti-war movement, many of these newspapers are given credit for the ending of the war. By 1969, virtually every sizeable city or college town in North America boasted at least one underground newspaper. Among the most prominent of these were the San Francisco Oracle, the Berkeley Barb and Berkeley Tribe; The Chicago Seed; and the LA Free Press.

This collection gathers 13 authentic stories from various Californian counterculture newspapers in homage to the innovative men and women who stood up and put stories into print that would never have been seen otherwise.