1969 Harvard Strike Posters
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GUEST:
In the mid to late '60s, I was teaching at Harvard, just starting out early in my teaching career. And in April of 1969, there was a student strike that was essentially a protest of the Vietnam War. But that kind of bloomed and gathered in various interlocking issues involving the community of Cambridge and the Boston area. Probably the most publicized incident was an occupation of the administration building, and then the Cambridge police clearing that building at a certain point. But both before and after that event, the students were creating these posters, putting them in all the Harvard buildings. So, there are a few that we have framed, just to have at least a little better situation for these particular items.
APPRAISER:
These are not ancient antiques that have no bearing on our lives; these are really part of our... certainly your, personal experience. One of the things that I love about posters in general is that they tell us all about history. And the late 1960s, specifically 1969, was a volatile time in the world. In 1968, in France, there were great student revolts. There was this strike in Boston in 1969. And it probably all culminated the year later in 1970, with the Kent State massacre.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
These posters were printed very inexpensively by students working out of the basement of some of the Harvard buildings. I think it was Memorial Hall...
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
in the basement, a group called Designers for Peace had a press, and they would run off these posters quickly and cheaply, and they were handed out. They were everywhere. But not many of them survived because they are really flimsy. I mean, they're, they're printed on newsprint, so very few have survived. And, at the time, the "Harvard Crimson" was reporting, in April of 1969, that the posters are high art in its most self-justifying sense. They make the walls they're pasted on better to look at, and they lift human participation in the strike out of pure rhetoric. The one closest to me are basically the lyrics to a Beatles song, which seems like a very unusual form of protest, except for the bottom word says "strike." The one closest to you quotes Pablo Neruda and some of his activist ideas. But it's the one in the middle that, to me, I think, really represents the whole movement and has in many ways become one of the iconic images of the strikes of 1969. It basically, in this sort of very cut-out, primitive text, this, this linoleum woodblock style, it says the reasons to strike. Among the most wonderful, I think, is, "Strike because there's no poetry in your lectures." "Strike because classes are a bore." "Strike for power." "Strike to smash the corporation," and so on. It really, sort of, sums up the time. Because these posters were printed quickly and cheaply, you will often see them with different-color ink. And, that said, they are very difficult to find. The Harvard Archives has a full set. It's hard to say how many they, there were. They were printed by the dozens and dozens and dozens on a daily basis.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
You look these up online, and there are no records of them having sold.
GUEST:
Yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER:
And what we can find are comparable posters, other Vietnam-era protest posters...
GUEST:
Yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER:
...that have appeared for sale. Generally, the, the Vietnam posters that appear for sale tend to sell for between $150 and $200 apiece. But because these are rarer, because they haven't come on the market, because they are specifically tied to the strikes at Harvard, and not the sort of anti-war protest movement as a whole, I would suggest an auction value for the three of them together between $600 and $900.
GUEST:
Oh, very interesting.
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