Sid Welsh Defense Committee; Native American Defense Committee

Original Pamphlet: "Justice for Sid Welsh" (1976) with: Original Flyer: "Freedom for Sid Welsh" (1977)

San Francisco, CA: American Indian Movement, 1977; 1978. First Printing. Single Sheets; Folded Single Sheet. Like others lately offered by Third Mind Books and affiliated with the legacy of the Second San Francisco Renaissance, this bundle attests to the intense and varied political involvement of its authors, and to the larger literary & activistic gestalt in which they played a seminal part. This segment of that history deals with the Native American activist, Sidney Welsh, and the SSFR's involvement with the American Indian Movement. The American Indian Movement, or A.I.M., "supported Indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities...[while] coordinating employment programs in both urban and rural communities across the country," much like the Black Panthers. As the great American poet, Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949) writes in The Thomas Rain Crowe Archive catalog, “The Native American Indian Movement, the AIM group, had their headquarters in San Francisco in those years…So, the politics got real. I mean, it wasn’t this kind of pie-in-the-sky stuff anymore. We had a lot of good ideas and intentions in the 60s but we didn’t know how to pull it off—and all of the sudden, in the 70s, people started doing things that were real, practical, and tangible. To try to move that whole consciousness, that revolutionary concept forward again” (The Thomas Rain Crowe Archive, p. 2). This bundle, — which features [1] a voluminous fold-out pamphlet titled "Justice for Sid Welsh: Stop All Attacks on AIM and Indian People"; [2] a flyer for a "Benefit for [the] Sid Welsh Defense Committee" that took place on Saturday, January 7, 1978; & [3] a scan of the first page of [1] — will prove both useful & alluring to collectors & libraries inclusive of historical, human rights-focused literary activism. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book, Starting from San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (Item No. 3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (Item No. 1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Folded single sheet & letter-sized promotional flyer: the first and only printings of these cause-specific, topically prescient pieces of SSFR ephemera. Event program in very fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, light bumping to fine-edges & corners; some light rubbing & age-toning throughout, otherwise, pristine. Near Fine. [Item #7417]

Price: $60.00