Ramparts was a glossy illustrated American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 to 1975 and closely associated with the New Left political movement. Unlike most of the radical magazines of the day, which were printed on pulp newsprint, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated.

Establishment

Ramparts was established in June 1962 by Edward Michael Keating Sr. in Menlo Park, California, as a "showcase for the creative writer and as a forum for the mature American Catholic". The magazine declared its intent to publish "fiction, poetry, art, criticism and essays of distinction, reflecting those positive principles of the Hellenic-Christian tradition which have shaped and sustained our civilization for the past two thousand years, and which are needed still to guide us in an age grown increasingly secular, bewildered, and afraid". Robert Scheer became managing editor, and Dugald Stermer was hired as art director. Former FBI agent William W. Turner was added to the staff of the publication.

In the fall of 1965, Howard Gossage introduced to Hinckle, Frederick C. Mitchell, a Latin America history graduate student at Berkeley, who had inherited money from his grandfather, and invested $100,000 in Ramparts, then, committed another $600,000, and secured loans and debts of around a quarter of a million dollars.

Activities

Ramparts was an early opponent of the Vietnam War. Its April 1966 cover article concerned the Michigan State University Group, a technical assistance program in South Vietnam that Ramparts claimed was a front for CIA covert operations. For that story, Ramparts won the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In August 1966, managing editor James F. Colaianni wrote the first national article denouncing the US use of napalm in that conflict. "The Children of Vietnam", a January 1967 photo-essay by William F. Pepper, depicted some of the injuries inflicted on Vietnamese children by U.S. attacks. That piece led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the war publicly for the first time, and he offered Ramparts the sole rights to publish the text of his speech.

In March 1967, Ramparts revealed links between the CIA and the National Student Association (NSA), raising concerns about CIA involvement in domestic issues. The CIA knew about the revelations in advance, and tried their best to limit the extent of the scandal. Nevertheless, financial clues led to further stories by the press, revealing CIA ties to groups like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Asia Foundation. In the estimation of historian John Prados, the ensuing scandal "marked a sea change for the agency".

One of the magazine's most controversial covers depicted the hands of four of its editors holding burning draft cards, with their names clearly visible. Ramparts also covered conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. The magazine published Che Guevara's diaries, with an introduction by Fidel Castro, and the prison diaries of Eldridge Cleaver, later republished as Soul on Ice. Upon his release from prison, Cleaver became a Ramparts staff writer.

The magazine's size and influence grew dramatically over these years. Moving to monthly production, combined subscriptions and newsstand sales increased from just under 100,000 at the end of 1966 to nearly 250,000 in 1968, a figure more than double that of the liberal weekly, The Nation.

Beginning in 1966, American authorities began investigating the magazine's funding, suspecting Soviet financial connections. CIA Director William Raborn asked for a report, and files were gathered on many of the editors and writers. According to a book published in 2008, it was the first time the CIA had targeted a US publication, a violation of the National Security Act of 1947. Bankruptcy and a temporary cessation of production followed. published in Ramparts as "The Politics of Orgasm". The male editorial board first laughed at Lydon's proposed article, but she persisted. Upon publication, the article sparked widespread discussion of the fake orgasm, and it was later brought into the scholarly literature about women's sexuality. Ramparts editor Robert Scheer acknowledged "The Politics of Orgasm" as "one of our great articles."

In June 1972, the magazine printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box, to block charges to the calling party, a variant of the blue box. Most of the 50,000 subscribers received copies, however, 90,000 avoiding a judicial delay, but causing financial losses to the magazine.

In August 1975, the magazine published its final issue.

Legacy

Several former staffers went on to found their own magazines. Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason founded Rolling Stone in 1967, when Sunday Ramparts folded. Sandra Levinson became a co-founder and executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies, and the founder and curator of the Cuban Art Space gallery.

Contributors

Notable contributors include: Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Susan Sontag, William Greider, Jonathan Kozol, Christopher Hitchens (as Matthew Blaire), Brit Hume, and Reese Erlich.

See also

  • List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture

References

Sources

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation Ramparts Magazine - Freedom of Information Act Records Request Response to MuckRock, via: archive.org January 16, 2018

;Articles

  • Pam Black, Ramparts, Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 2004.
  • James DiEugenio, Warren Hinckle and the Glory that was Ramparts, Kennedys and King, September 6, 2016
  • Daniel McCarthy, "A Fistful of Dynamite,", The American Conservative, January 1, 2010.
  • Jack Shafer, "Scoop," New York Times Sunday Review of Books, October 8, 2009.

;Video:

  • Ramparts Editors on CIA Activities (aired February 14, 1967, KPIX) - Digital Information Virtual Archive