The Rag was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966–1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, and the drug culture. The Rag encouraged these political constituencies and countercultural communities to coalesce into a significant political force in Austin. As the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the first underground paper in the South, The Rag helped shape a flourishing national underground press. According to historian and publisher Paul Buhle, The Rag was "one of the first, the most long-lasting and most influential" of the Sixties underground papers. In his 1972 book, The Paper Revolutionaries, Laurence Leamer called The Rag "one of the few legendary undergrounds."
Early history
The Rag first hit the streets in Austin on October 10, 1966. Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman were the original editors of the paper. (They were called "funnels" in keeping with the paper's democratic structure.) The Rag was closely associated with SDS and played a major role in bringing together the anarchist-leaning New Lefties and Austin's rich countercultural community, helping to merge them into a major political force.
Former staffer Alice Embree recalls that "The Rag covered what was not covered by the 'straight' press. The writers participated in the political and cultural uprising and also wrote about it. And they told you where to get a chicken dinner for 35 cents." The Rag featured the writing of major New Left figures like Gary Thiher, Jeff Shero, Robert Pardun, and Greg Calvert. It covered the Austin rock scene which was one of the birthplaces of the psychedelic music phenomenon.
According to John McMillian, author of the 2011 book Smoking Typewriters, The Rag "was a spirited, quirky, and humorous paper, whose founders pushed the New Left's political agenda even as they embraced the counterculture's zeal for rock music, psychedelics, and personal liberation," and, according to historian Douglas Rossinow, the paper was "enormously important to local activists."
The Rag would become virtually indistinguishable from the community it served, helping to coalesce and mobilize the movement in Austin, both as a news source and as a direct agent of change. Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith wrote at Liberation News Service in 1969 that "the people who put The Rag together were the same people who conceived demonstrations and love-ins, who were among the leaders of confrontations with local authorities, and who were at the forefront of local cultural gatherings."
Featured content
The Rag featured news coverage and commentary on the War in Vietnam and the movement opposing it, the Civil Rights Movement, the student freedom movement, the development of the New Left and SDS, the psychedelic rock and folk music scenes, and the sixties counterculture movement, of which Austin was a major outpost. It also carried national and world news and opinion from Liberation News Service (LNS) and from other underground newspapers around the country.
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Gilbert Shelton's iconic sixties comic strip, was born in The Rag and, thanks in part to the Underground Press Syndicate, was republished in underground papers and comic books all over the world. Artist Jim Franklin—whose surrealist armadillos helped to place the ugly little armored critters right up there with the longhorn as a symbol of Texas—designed many of the paper's covers, as did noted cartoonist and artist Kerry Awn. God Nose, a comic strip by Jack Jackson, ran in The Rag. Alan Pogue, now a documentary photographer, was a staff photographer for eight years.
Over its lifespan, the paper evolved with the times, for a while becoming one of the strongest voices of the women's liberation movement and later focusing on local politics, covering Austin city government, neighborhood protests, and the labor movement. As Glenn Scott recalls about the later Rag, one "could not have imagined a more democratic process than a Rag copy meeting. An all-volunteer group of self-taught editors and copy writers debated the sexism and violence in pornography, the corporate influence in utility policies, and the CIA's involvement in Chile. And how much space went to the Free Clinic benefit and the Freak Brothers."