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The Bird! Electronic issues here.
Georgia State University has put the entire run of The Great Speckled Bird online as a scholarly tool. The first underground newspaper to get such treatment. Thanks GSU! Give it a Try!
Bill Fibben and Carter Tomassi were two of the photographers for The Bird.
Here are Carter’s photos on The Bird. And another.
Here’s Carter’s photo of Bill Fibben in the Park.
Great Speckled Memories
Back when The Bird really was The Word
By Jonathan Springston, Staff Writer, Atlanta Progressive News (May 09, 2006)
January 5, 1968 Broadside announcing a new underground newspaper for Atlanta
-courtesy Bill Mankin.
After future staffers went to a concert at 12th Gate and heard the old gospel song, the Great Speckled Bird acquired a name.
The Great Speckled Bird was what unified the people living on the edge of the Great Society in Atlanta. It extended the ideas of the Hip Community beyond the physical area around The Strip and The Park, where the Hippies were to be contained. People in small towns from north Florida to Alabama, the Carolinas and Tennessee depended on it for a source of news beyond the conventional media.
We knew first hand what did and did not get reported. We had experienced civil rights, anti-war marches, labor disputes, police actions and other events, that if reported at all, were denigrated and made to sound trivial, or turned on the victims. For honest reporting we depended on The Great Speckled Bird.
The Great Speckled Bird was used like a trusted small town paper to send messages and seek like minded people for projects. It reviewed the reality people in the emerging Counter Culture experienced daily. The Bird was what made us a community.
When you traveled, there was a network of Underground Newspapers like the Bird, Liberation News Service, which alerted you to what’s what. In the days before Internet or answering services Los Angeles to New York had to offer we had to hand out the papers ourselves
When Nixon tried to protect criminal acts by his administration and extend his power beyond the Constitution, it was the Liberation News Service that spread the facts first and aroused people. People assembled in protest over obstruction of justice for all and made their voice heard. Now all is mostly quiet and aquiescent, afraid to be accused of not wanting to keep the homeland secure, McCarthy would be so happy. Too bad for the American People of tomorrow there isn’t a source reporting news similar to The Great Speckled Bird for this malignant administration, which Libby-rates and honors its criminals.
Many people in the hip community made cash by selling the Bird. The Bird deal made it so you couldn’t lose money and could, by selling regularly, make a decent living by hippie standards.
Birds were mailed to me at Oxford College and I sold them in the cafeteria evenings. It was considered uncool to not pay over the stated price and magnanimously say, “Keep the change!”
Fridays I would race in my slow but steady Celestial Omnibus VW in I-20, up I-75 to the Birdhouse on 14th, to start. If I had money, I’d buy Birds. If not, they would front a few to sell, return and repeat until you had cash to buy Birds to carry wherever to sell.
Weekends I’d try to get 14th and Peachtree where the Uniform company had a lawn shaded by huge trees. People would hang out and talk to you or nap in the shade. The job was to barker Birds. You could walk along the edge of the street holding the latest cover up to see and try to catch the eye of each driver. Acting a bit for the tourists always got money.
It was always a a trip. friday and Saturday nights young, rich hipsters headed to the park would pay not 25 cents, but $5 to the “real” hippie selling Birds. Determined to be wild suburban middle aged couples where the woman wanted to “kiss a real hippie”, you’d let the husband show off by leeringly asking for marijuana by some cool, unknown nickname he had heard who knows where, and ask if it was true it was an aphrodisiac. Or pass you party favors of one style or another to be hidden under the tree until you were ready to leave. You also met a lot of good friendly folks.
Cops would come by and stop. Some decently friendly. Some on power trip staring and trying to make you nervous enough to step in the street and be arrested for “impeding traffic” even if the street was empty.
My worst experience came on my second day selling at that corner. A really fat young crewcut cop on a tricycle pulled up stopping just inches from my feet. he took his time standing up on the trike and swinging over one ham leg and stepping down. A moment to work that gunbelt around and up to where there should have been a waist. straiten his cap. Then suddenly pul;l his gun and crouch pointing it at my face a few inches away. I had grown up in a small town and until that very minute I had thought all cops were peace officers just making everyone safe. This cop changed my mind when he said a word aloud I had only seen in print before, and rarely then.
Flock plans to celebrate paper that soared from underground
By Keith Graham Staff Writer
Hatched with a hopeful chirp by a flock of space-age muckrakers, it soared into flight 20 years ago billing itself as "The South's Standard Underground Newspaper."
With revolutionary relish, the Great Speckled Bird swooped from controversy to controversy the next several years, calling out for peace and racial justice and the making of a counterculture in an offbeat manner that attracted more readers than any other weekly paper in Georgia. But the self-proclaimed "anti-war, anti-racist" newspaper plummeted and crashed in 1976, its wings clipped by lack of enthusiasm in times that were a'changin'.
Gone but not forgotten by a generation that found it groovy if far-out required reading, the Great Speckled Bird will fly again if only for a day on Saturday, ironically the start of a weekend of memorials to victims of war, including a war the Bird firmly opposed. Ex-Bird "readers, sellers, writers, staffers and all beings of this known universe" are invited to a reunion doubling as a benefit for Radio Free Georgia (WRFG) and The Fund for Southern Communities at the Atlanta Water Works Lodge.
In traditional laid-back fashion, the' event's organizers say they do not know exactly what will happen, though there will be some music and an exhibit to remind folks of the gory glory days. "Hopefully, we won't have riots," said a chuckling Tom Coffin, who created a forerunner of the Bird — The Emory Herald-Tribune, later called the Big American Review — during a brief stay as an Emory graduate student.
Coffin, 44, a crane operator who came South after earning a degree at Oregon's Reed College, and his wife, Stephanie, an activist from the University of Washington, were among the 20 to 25 founders, mostly white civil rights activists, who chipped in $25 to $100 a head to create the Bird in March 1968. They borrowed the paper's name from a country song recorded by Roy Acuff, which in turn had borrowed from a passage in the Bible's book of Jeremiah about a bird different from the others.
On the inaugural issue's front page, Coffin spelled out the philosophy. The Bird, he promised, would "bitch and badger, carp and cry and perhaps give Atlanta (and environs, 'cause we're growing, baby) a bit of honest and interesting and, we trust, even readable journalism." It also would offer alternatives to the American way of life for "turned on" readers.
The other front-page story in that issue set the tone for what was to come with a blast at Ralph McGill, one of the icons of Southern moderation, even liberalism. "What's It All About, Ralphie?" attacked the early civil rights advocate for becoming a "leading exponent of U.S. imperialism and deception" by backing the Vietnam War.
In subsequent issues, the Bird told its readers about the Black Panthers, Ho Chi Minh, the drug bust of local hippie Mother David and striking garbage workers. Readers saw regular coverage of theater, art and music, too. Not just the music of acts such as the psychedelic Vanilla Fudge and mellow Donovan, but even bluegrass and country. I
The Bird arose at a time when ' underground newspapers were flapping their wings from Berkeley, home of the Barb, to New York, where the East Village Other and the Rat were the rage.
Robert Glessing, author of "The Underground Press in America," estimates there were 456 underground publications by 1970.
A minimum of 1.5 million people read the undergrounds by 1972, according to Laurence Learner, author of "The Paper Revolutionaries," and other estimates put the figures as high as 18 million.
A midsize alternative, the Bird topped out with a respectable circulation of 25,000 and won plaudits coast to coast. In Learner's estimation, it displayed casual sophistication in writing style and a cool graphic brilliance. In a feature on the underground press in 1971, the "60 Minutes" television show said that if the Los Angeles Free Press was The New York Times of the undergrounds, Atlanta's Bird was its Wall Street Journal, a literate paper with an analytical bent.
But success did not come without struggle. From the beginning, the Bird faced both external and internal pressures that made its flight a dizzying one.
After a damaging local smear campaign, the paper was forced to go all the way to New Orleans to find a printer. Atlanta police seized the May 26, 1969, issue, featuring a cover cartoon of an armed man shouting an obscenity under a Coca- Cola logo. Bird hawkers were harassed by police, and the paper had to go to court to maintain use of the U.S. mail system. In 1972, the paper, which carried no insurance, was the victim of an unsolved firebombing that demolished its offices near Piedmont Park.
And if the outside world didn't succeed in destroying the paper, it sometimes seemed its own staff might
Learner's book used the Bird as "a particularly clear example" of internal tension between cultural and political forces, a common problem for the underground papers. And staff members acknowledge there were constant discussions to define the correct ideology at regular Monday and Thursday meetings. Committed to the notion of participatory democracy, the Bird staff was organized as a collective that made decisions by majority vote and preferably by consensus.
Picking cover art, even choosing what color ink to use, was often controversial. As the women's movement gained strength, a women's caucus was formed to battle staff sexism. And bitter debates developed over whether the paper, which began, according to one staffer, with roots in existentialist Christian philosophy, should adopt pure Marxist- Leninist positions.
Even amid the strife, however, Bird staffers continued to try to shape a radicalism uniquely suited to the South. "A lot of us were from the South, and we kind of thought in Southern terms," said Steve Wise, who covered the peace movement within the military, international affairs and rock 'n' roll.
Wise believes the Bird contributed positively to the changes that transformed the region. 'You can see change occurring. I grew up in a segregated society," said Wise, a Newport News, Va., native now working as a courier while writing a thesis on Latin American history for a master's degree from Georgia State University. "When we started, the level of racism here was a lot higher than it is now. ... For basically a white paper, our pro-civil rights coverage was different from any paper around. "
Howard Romaine, another founder who is now a lawyer and. aspiring country music songwriter in Nashville, Tenn., agreed that the Bird had an impact on race relations. "I never did have any revolutionary expectations," he said, "except for the notion that black people voting in the South was revolutionary."
Other former staffers say the paper helped to end the Vietnam War and to create a climate that has prevented the United States from going to war in Central America. And on the local level, they say the Bird helped diminish police brutality.
But by the early 1970s, some of the original staff members already had begun to fly the coop, some to other movement jobs, a few to other alternative media, most simply to try to make ends meet as they began to raise families. (The Bird's, salaries of $25 to $60 a week did not go far.) ,
While staff" members could be replaced and were, readers could not — once members of the movement that provided the circulation base began moving into the Me Decade, losing much of their interest in the issues covered by the paper. "After '72, the movement just sort of collapsed," said Wise, who will celebrate his 45th birthday at the reunion. "The anti-war movement went into a very swift eclipse when the draft ended." In re-reading the papers lately, he said, he was interested up until 1973. Afterward, the paper just seemed to be all critique without any feeling that anything positive — action by a movement — would result, he said.
A 1984 attempt at reviving the Bird with about half new staff and half old hands fizzled. "Basically, it was sort of a nostalgic thing, and there really wasn't a market," said Wise, who participated partly because his fondest hope had once been that the Bird would become a permanent institution like New York's Village Voice.
"I think it was a great tragedy what happened to the Bird," said Romaine. To become commercially viable, however, the paper would have had to open itself up to more diverse viewpoints. And, as several staffers commented, the Bird was always short on people who knew a lot about running a successful business.
However, Saturday will not be a time for pondering what might have been but for celebrating what was. "We've had great times laughing and talking and remembering all our old arguments," said Stephanie Coffin, a part-time English instructor at Georgia State University who was one of the reunion organizers. "That was a fantastic period. It was an incredibly creative, incredibly alive period. And it was totally consuming. It left a vacuum in a lot of people's lives."
Mar 20, 197 Vol. 8 #12 pg. 9
1968-1975 “Printing the news you’re not suppose to know….”
Seven years ago the first issue of The Great Speckled Bird hit the streets of Atlanta-March 8, 1968. A history of the BIRD since then would inevitably include the rise and fall of the "hippie" era in Atlanta. The BIRD did not create the Atlanta hippie scene, nor did the latter create the BIRD. Yet, they struggled against some of the same powers, hand-in-hand. At the same time they often were in conflict with each other-politics vs. lifestyle.
The forerunner of the BIRD was an anti-Vietnam War weekly newsletter on the campus of Emory University in 1967, the Emory Herald-Tribune. A decision to go to a larger format created the Big American Review. At that time the movement for social change was almost non-existent in the South. Joining the Emory radicals were political activists from the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), VISTA, and other organizations.
The high-energy level of the people involved kept the idea alive and, in fact, expanded the concept from a campus-wide publication to a city-wide underground newspaper. By this time there was a burgeoning movemen5 of organizers in Atlanta.
Weeks of meetings and arguments failed to produce a curable name. Atlanta Cooperative News Project was the only name that everyone at least did not disagree about for the publication. It would have remained at that, but one night some of the people involved with the fledgling newspaper heard Rev. Pearly Brown sing an old Roy Acuff song. "The Great-Speckled Bird" is a spiritual known by blacks and whites, and is strictly Southern. Basis for the song comes from a Bible verse, "Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about ire against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour." (Jeremiah, 12, 9)
From the beginning the name was unusual, catchy, and held a significance. The description in the Bible verse also came to hold true to the newspaper, which found itself hassled and harassed by the FBI, city government, Atlanta Police Department and the business community starting with issue one. The reasons given for these harassments were assorted cosmetic charges: "panhandling," "obscenity," "obstructing traffic," "selling without a permit," "inciting to riot." In every instance a BIRD-related matter was taken to court, the newspaper was found to be in the right. First Amendment advocates note that governmental efforts to close down the BIRD by forcing it to cease publication arose out of discomfort—a newspaper had finally arisen in Atlanta, "printing the news you weren't supposed to know."
That first issue cost $130 (1968 dollars) to put out. Everyone who had helped put it out hit the streets in the evening to hawk this new paper to Atlantans. Much to their surprise and delight the 15 cents collected for each copy sold amounted 10 enough money to print the next issue. The Great Speckled Bird was a success, or a curiosity-piece, or something but it caught attention.
Later, as harassment plagued the BIRD, the national news media picked up the story and helped spread the name. Nationally, people at first considered the BIRD an anomaly-this radical voice coming out of Atlanta, Georgia. of all places. As people involved in the movement throughout the nation became acquainted with the BIRD, its reputation grew, based on its editorial content. This editorial content was also what got the BIRD in trouble with Atlanta's government and business communities.
Over the years the BIRD has reflected the subject concerns of the individuals working on the paper, but in an intended collective fashion. The underlying thread has been action for social change; the specific ideologies have ranged along the left-end of the political spectrum, somewhere beyond liberal. The BIRD has gone through many phases, depending upon the people putting the most energy into the paper. The first issue concentrated on draft resistance, anti-war activities, civil rights concerns, and the student and GI movements. These interests have continued to be included in the BIRD'S coverage with emphasis going to other areas at different points.
When the hip community began expanding and gaining visibility in Atlanta (circa 1969-70), much of the BIRD'S news coverage centered around the legal hassles that staff members and street people received from the city government through actions of the police . Changes came about in the BIRD'S coverage of women and the gay community as staff problems with sexism saw increased involvement by these oppressed groups (1970-71). A "major change in direction with increased emphasis on local news coverage occurred in 1972.
Not too long after the BIRD got started, a phantom group called the Dekalb Parents League for Decency initiated a campaign that at first glance appeared to be directed against the BIRD. Various unsuspecting churchgoers and upstanding citizens of DeKalb County received a handbill through the mail in the Fall of 1968 condemning the Dekalb New Era (the governmental organ of Dekalb County), for printing the BIRD on their equipment. The handbill was composed of clippings from the BIRD with certain "nasty" words underlined in pen. The group purported to be disturbed by the "sacrilege, pornography, depravity, immorality, and draft dodging which are preached in The Great Speckled Bird." The immediate effect was to intimidate the New Era so that it no longer would print the BIRD. However, it seems that since the New Era supported Clark Harrison's campaign for County Commissioner, some astute political observers determined the handbill was a smear sheet against the Harrison campaign. Unethical political practices are infra-party affairs, perhaps, but state law prohibits the distribution of unsigned political material. The Dekalb Parents League for Decency somehow "failed" to include anyone's name. The GbI, postal authorities, and the county sheriffs office got hot.
But when the investigations led to the Decatur courthouse and it looked like there was a possibility that high Democratic Party officials in Dekalb County were involved, all of a sudden they decided to investigate the BIRD for "obscenity!" (Especially since it might have been put together in the Dekalb County Courthouse using Dekalb County employees on Dekalb County time, possibly involving the County Commissioner himself— Brince Manning.)
The Atlanta Vice Squad questioned BIRD street vendors. News dealers cancelled their orders in fear. |Some advertisers expressed hesitation. No printer within100 miles would print the BIRD. It was a false issue, directed at the BIRD, instead of a campaign violation.
Threats of prosecution for obscenity by Fulton and Dekalb solicitors and acts of harassment by various law enforcement agencies in the city and two counties motivated the BIRD to file suit on November 15, 1968. The BIRD sought a restraining order against obscenity prosecution, which was refused, although the judge promised no prosecution would be allowed before the court could be convened to rule on the constitutionality of the Georgia statute on obscenity.
At the trial, emphasis changed from the BIRD'S reprinting the smear sheet to a cartoon, entitled, "Anal-land' that it had run. The Georgia statute on obscenity includes a "shameful or morbid interest in...excretion" as well as sex. As described by a BIRD writer, ‘Anal-land' used as its comic vehicle graphic displays of and common language for that excretion politely referred to as defecation."
Five months later the court ruling came: "In consideration of the facts of the case sub justice, we are of the opinion that THE GREAT SPECKLED BIRD is not obscene as that term has been defined in Roth supra, and its progeny, and is constitutionally protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution." -(Signed) Lewis R. Morgan, United States Circuit Judge; Newell Edenfield, United States District Judge Albert J. Henderson, Jr., United States District Judge.
The BIRD was not guilty of any of the politically contrived "obscenity" charges leveled against it at this time. But it was guilty of spreading sexist attitudes through its classifieds section. The classifieds were 50 cents a line, and before long the personals section had expanded considerably, requesting young, hip. white, females to move in free of charge and do housewifely chores. Other ads appeared that exploited the gay culture. Street sales benefited from the appeal of these sex ads. Even today the BIRD has to contend with this reputation. The Women's Liberation Group in Atlanta (and many letters to the BIRD) complained about such ads. In 1970 these ads were eliminated, classifieds were made free (!!'). The BIRD now applies the same standards to ads as to articles, not purposely printing anything that is Racist, sexist, imperialist, classist, agist.
In the early issues of the BIRD the nude women (photos and drawings) were not lewd, but of the artistic variety, done, in fact. by art students or self-styled artist. The BIRD offered an outlet for their publication. Explanation of the profanity printed was that the words had political connotations and were not to be taken literally.
"UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKER"
"Hello, I'm with the company that handles Coke's advertising and they're all very upset about this week's cover of the BIRD. They want me to get a copy. Where can I get one?" That was a call received on Friday, May 23, 1969, the day after the BIRD with the popular Trashman comic book cover appeared: Super Street Man up, against the Coca-Cola wall motherfucker. Later, word came that "Mayor Allen is hopping mad about that cover and has ordered the city attorney's office to prepare indictments against the BIRD."
As one BIRD writer observed at the time, "Interesting chain of cause and effect; Coke hollers and Ivan dances. Good ole government of the interests by the interests, and for the interests. Now we must confess, we didn't overhear Woodruff calling Alien. Most likely Woodruff didn't even need to call Alien. I mean everybody in the Atlanta ruling class knows 'Thou shalt not take Coke's name in vain.'
The BIRD staff had had a difficult time in deciding whether to run the controversial cover. From the beginning the BIRD has been run on a cooperative basis: every person putting effort into printing and distributing the paper is part of the co-op and has a say in the running of the paper and the editorial content. At the time the dispute revolved around an aesthetic question of taste. According to the BIRD staffer quoted above, "There's no use stirring up the local ruling class troglodytes unnecessarily." But the reaction by the mayor absolved that question and made it a political issue, "The important fact about the most recent controversial BIRD cover is that it helps to clarify who rules Atlanta."
The BIRD'S business manager (Gene Guerrero) and three BIRD sellers were charged with the two counts of selling obscene literature to minors and violating the city profanity ordinance. The sellers had been arrested with the aid of a 16-year-old "community service officer fink" who bought BIRD'S under the-watchful eye of city detectives' cameras.
In court Judge T.C. Little queried: "What does the New Left have against a corporation with wealth? Do you own stock? Don't corporations give everybody an equal vote through stock ownership? Would you just break up a corporation and give some to everybody? Doesn't that boil down to socialism or communism?"
BIRD staffer Gene Guerrero answered: "Coca-Cola is and has been a very racist, viciously anti-union company. Their money is not honest money. They've broken Federal Labor laws over and over again in their attempts to stop unions. If in becoming a 'newspaper empire', we (the BIRD) were racist and anti-union then someone could and should have a cover like that about us."
The charges were obscenity, but the prosecution of the BIRD was for political reasons, having nothing to do with obscenity. It was the policy of the city by this time to try hassling the BIRD out of business. The case was lost; $1000 fine per person (4). The BIRD appealed. However, for some reason-the city asked that the appeal be sustained— the convictions were reversed.
CLASS ACTION SUIT
Both the BIRD and the street people on the strip found themselves being hassled by the city government -and business community, basically because they were seen as threats to the status quo and tranquility. The BIRD collected affidavits from victims of official violence and harassment. During that same time period, the police provided more evidence, first with the August 4, 1969 Police Riot on 14th Street, then with the Sunday afternoon battle in Piedmont Park in mid-September. The BIRD filed a class action suit contending that there was a pattern of official harassment, discrimination, and intimidation against longhairs.
Aside from harassment from police for "selling without ii permit, the BIRD consistently had received delays and put-offs when applying for press passes. The "selling without a permit" ordinance was designed primarily to register door-to-door salesmen, not pertaining to the sale of newspapers. The Supreme Court had ruled (Lovett vs. City of Griffin, 1938) that requiring a permit to sell or distribute newspapers is an abridgment of First Amendment rights. In regard to the press passes, the harassment was not because the Police Department did not consider the BIRD a viable newspaper, but was an attempt to restrict the access of BIRD reporters-another First Amendment abridgement that continues periodically today.
Problems also arose in the cities of Savannah (1969) and Macon (1970) over the sale of BIRDs they were banned in these cities. Principals in high schools and some colleges in Atlanta and Dekalb County still continue to suspend students who are caught with BIRDs in their possession (not even trying to sell them).. Some area colleges have banned the distribution of BIRDs on their campus, just as former Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox banned BIRD vending boxes from the state Capitol .
MASSELL HASSELL
During the reign of Mayor Sam Massell One BIRD seller told a staff member, "Whenever you write anything about the mayor or the city, we get it on the street ten times worse." On April 17, 19 72- "The Day Mayor Massell Tried To Kill The Bird"- calls began arriving at the BIRD that Vice Squad detectives were arresting BIRD sellers on charges of peddling without a license. By night nine had been arrested—no BIRD sellers were on the street. Street sales accounted for 50-75 % of the BIRD'S circulation during this period.
The story in the BIRD at that time began. "Harassment of BIRD sellers had picked up in December (1971) with our publication of the Slumlord List, a computer printout listing the largest owners of slum properties in the city, which the mayor had refused to act on and even denied existed. After that, the mayor's office had stopped sending us press releases."
A federal court suit was brought against Massell, Inman, and Vice Squad E.F.McKillop. When asked if he would check into the BIRD arrests, Massell ranted. "No, I'm not going to do anything. 1 don't care what happens to them. They're no longer a newspaper, they're a hate sheet, so they no longer have any rights. They've yelled fire in a crowded theatre, and under .those circumstances, the right to free speech can be limited. It's no longer a viable alternative newspaper. It's just a matter of time until the newspaper closes."
One cop told the seller he had arrested, "We never had the go-ahead before, but we do now, and we're going to put the BIRD out of business. If you quote me in court, I'll call you a liar'." Vice Squad Capt. McKillop's TV justification for the arrests was, "These people jump out into the people." He told the BIRD lawyer that it the city really wanted to get the BIRD, they would have sent the fire inspector. He denied harassment charges, but was speechless when told a fire inspector had been at the BIRD house the day before.
The week after the sellers' incident and the fire inspection, the US Post Office notified the BIRD staff that its newspapers would not be accepted for mailing if they included abortion referral ads (that had been printed for three years). An 1840 law was being used. A temporary restraining order allowed BIRDs to be mailed while the matter went to court. By October, 1972, the 1840 ' law was ruled unconstitutional. No one knew if the City Hall and Post Office hassles were related.
Then, on the next Friday a BIRD worker commented, "Do you realize we got through a whole week without a new hassle?" At 5 am on Saturday, May 6, 1972, a tremendous explosion erupted at 240 Westminister Drive with flames encompassing the whole house so that, within an hour, "there was nothing left of the front half but a charred shell." The offices of The Great Speckled Bird had been firebombed. Before leaving the scene, Lt. J.A.Bird of the Fire Department told the BIRD staff that the way the fire burned, the noise the neighbors heard and the course of the fire indicated arson, probably ignited with something like a Molotov cocktail. The job looked like a professional one and thorough investigations turned up no evidence.
But by 11 am that morning, old friends, new friends, and former staffers arrived to give their support. "Already the BIRD was rising from the ashes" with temporary office space offered, benefits planned, time and services donated. In the BIRD story of the incident the comment was, "If the bomber meant to alienate the public from the BIRD, he failed totally. Not one caller said, "I’m glad it happened. You deserved it.” Instead comments were more like, 'I've never read the" BIRD. but I don't like the idea of anyone trying to bomb you out. How can I send a contribution?"
The BIRD received tremendous support from the straight media, local bands, movement friends and others. A support letter from Julian Bond noted, "From its beginning as a small thorn in the side of the monopoly press to its present eminence as one of America's strongest voices for the unrepresented, the BIRD has printed the news Atlantans couldn't get elsewhere."
The firebombing was traced to no one. Although the BIRD knew where a lot of its hassles were coming from, and it could easily associate the two, nothing could be proved.
END OF THE BIRD?
The BIRD had a real estate problem—now it was a definite risk. But somehow it found a house, its fourth, at 956 Juniper Street, one block from the almost deserted "strip." It was a funky old house with leaded ornate windows. From here the BIRD continued to cover Atlanta's news in an alternative manner. But a new problem arose -the staff.
Back in 1970 two "raps" 6 months apart had appeared in the BIRD from the staff speaking to the readers with self-evaluation and showing somewhat the inside of the BIRD. One even noted, "People have wondered if we still serve any purpose." But, the BIRD went through its changes on the surface—enough to keep it going several more years.
Then, all of a sudden (for some readers) in the January 15, 1973 issue the BIRD announced, "This is it Folks!...with the Jan. 29, Volume Six, Number Three, issue (to be available Jan. 25) the BIRD will fold its wings and cease to f1y." The paper was not broke. Instead, "The people presently on paid staff are leaving the paper and no new staff members for the paper as it is have come forward." Before leaving though, the old staff called a meeting of interested old BIRD folks-readers and workers. About 60 or 70 people showed up, shocked and willing to commit themselves to keeping the BIRD going.
The January 29, 1973 issue proclaimed, "REJOICE! The BIRD flies on." The new BIRD staff renovated the BIRD offices, even throwing out the old liverwurst in the refrigerator. The staff had grandiose plans and big ideas. Some schemes worked, some didn't; many never got to be implemented. All but one of this "new" BIRD staff have left by this time of the BIRD'S 7th birthday.
Many, probably most, of the problems facing the BIRD a year ago still stare the present staff in the face. Also, unlike previous staffs, the present one has to deal with a very bad general economic situation. But one fact has remained with-The Bird from the beginning; its purpose is to "print controversial or unpopular views and actively try to change our society, not to be a money-making operation."
A BIRD statement made August 20, 1973, still pertains:
"In this world of corporate bigness, greed, private interest, exploitation, and cynicism, the BIRD stands in opposition, trying to tell the truth that doesn't fit into the established interests' world and trying to help build a consciousness and a movement to change this country and the world. We think that is something important to do."
"But we do not have the power, wealth, and position to do it alone. We can only succeed as long as we have the support of the people who believe in what we are doing, take the time and effort to help us out—with money, information, news and reinforcement."
"Almost all of the revelations that have come out of the Watergate hearings were known and reported in the pages of the BIRD long before they became public issues. The same is true of the recent disclosures of secret bombings in Cambodia as well as many other sordid tales of governmental corruption, deceit and dirty tricks, only now seeing the light in the established media. On the local level, it has been the BIRD that has covered such things as the Rich's strike, the secret deals and maneuverings around the school desegregation plan and the upcoming mayor's race, secret real estate plans to steal "Almost all of the revelations that have come out of the Watergate hearings were known and reported in the pages of the BIRD long before they became public -issues. The same is true of the recent disclosures of secret bombings in Cambodia as well as many other sordid tales of governmental corruption, deceit and dirty tricks, only now seeing the light in the established media. On the local level, it has been the BIRD that has covered such things as the Rich's strike, the secret deals and maneuverings around the school desegregation plan and the upcoming mayor's race, secret real estate plans to steal land from poor people for commercial developments, the hidden scandals of the police department and the attempt by 'law 'n' order' John Inman to exert dictatorial control over the police department, as well as many other stories too hot or too revealing for the bigger Atlanta papers." '
This time next year, the BIRD might not even be around anymore. This could have been said any of the last seven years, but now the problems are more serious. The paper has only one full-time staffer left, with many part-timers and volunteers helping to hold the operation together. BIRD staffers and friends are trying to solve its pressing economic problems, and need assistance. One overriding question must be asked: Does the BIRD really matter anymore? Do the issues of the times demand that it survive? If enough people answer "yes" to these questions, the BIRD will survive its latest crises.
—j.d.cade
