1970 Berkeley
poster workshops
.
Lincoln Cushing, 11/13/2025
DRAFT This is a work in progress, a catalog raisonne of protest posters produced spring-summer 1970 on or near UC Berkeley. For reference purposes only. Corrections and amplifications welcome.
Sample posters: Strike!, Kamakazi Design Group; Amerika is devouring its children, Jay Belloli; Know your enemy, Shane and Sally Weare (SFAI); Murio una muerte natural (he died a natural death), Malaquias Montoya; rifle flag, artist unknown; Let there be peace, Robin Repp.
Broadly referred to as the “1970 Berkeley poster workshops,” this body of work consists of posters produced during the spring and summer of 1970 at or around the University of California, Berkeley after the US invasions of Laos and Cambodia and the subsequent shootings at Kent State and Jackson State. Schools all over the country shut down and many produced a range of protest posters, but the “Berkeley workshops” were long suspected of being the most prolific. By this count, over 500 titles are included, matching the fabled student posters produced in Paris 1968.
I reviewed physical and digital collections to identify distinct titles produced and determine where they were produced. It’s an imprecise and incomplete process, compounded by the fact that few posters were dated, few were credited as to source or artist, and posters were freely shared between groups, making provenance murky. Many posters included in institutional special collections include posters from other years or workshops.
This catalog uses the following guidelines:
1. Only copies in multiples are included, no hand-made placards.
2. Single image examples are chosen, do not include variations in color or paper or subsequent alteration.
A simplified numbering system has been used to more easily identify distinct titles, each arranged in alphabetical order. For the purposes of this draft catalog additional known information (artist, printing location, image source, etc.) has not been included. It is meant to help the hive mind identify posters that belong or do not belong to this set.
The seven categories are based on a best assessment of where they were made:
1. UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design (Wurster Hall, “Gorilla Graphics”) and Wheeler Hall
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_CED-Wheeler.pdf
418 posters, UCB_001 through 418
2. UC Berkeley Chicano Center
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_Chicano_Ctr.pdf
3 posters, UCB_423 through 425
3. UC Berkeley Art Department
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_Art_Dept.pdf
27 posters, UCB_426 through 453
4. UC Berkeley computer programmer art
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_computer.pdf
3 posters, UCB_463 through 464
5. UC Berkeley Kamakazi Design Group
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_Kamakazi.pdf
6 posters, UCB_465 through 470
6. UC Berkeley students who produced posters off-campus
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_UCB_off-campus.pdf
2 posters, UCB_471 through 473
7. San Francisco Bay Area posters produced during this period and circulated with the others
https://docspopuli.org/pdfs/Berkeley_1970_catalog/1970_spring-summer_not_UCB.pdf
37 posters, BA_1970_01 through 37
Lincoln Cushing, Docs Populi – Documents
for the Public
lcushing@docspopuli.org
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