In the 1960s, students at Western Michigan University published an anti-war, countercultural newspaper. Now the Western Activist, as it was known, has been digitized.
The paper covered the Black Panther movement and protests against the Vietnam War among many other topics.
Then-student Dan Foley wrote the Activist’s first article. He said the team that worked on the paper – published by the campus group Students for Social Involvement – wanted to engage with the day’s urgent political problems.
“Let’s not just be the people who talk about it but the people who do something about it,” he said.
The Activist frequently called out Western’s official student newspaper, the Western Herald, for allegedly ignoring or misinterpreting the social movements it covered.
Richard Miner was an academic advisor for and a contributor to the Activist.
“I was extremely pleased that this would come to light again,” he said, “and that people could look back and see what we were thinking and writing at the time, because I think it’s still relevant.”
Though the paper was published at Western, Central Michigan University’s Clarke Historical Library hosts the archive.
Western also has links to the archivesof several other newspapers that have been published in Kalamazoo, including Focus News, which covered the African-American community; The Augustinian, which published local Catholic news; and the alternative weekly the Kalamazoo News.