Collection Details:

Collection Name and Number: The Kudzu Collection (T/019).
Creator/Collector: Mississippi Student News Project members.
Date(s): 1965-1972; n.d.
Size: 2.00 cubic feet.
Language(s): English.
Processed by: Tougaloo College staff; Finding Aid by MDAH staff, Tyson M. Koenig, 2005.
Provenance: Loan of Tougaloo College of Madison County, MS, in 2004.
Repository: Archives & Records Services Division, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

 

Rights and Access:

Access restrictions: Collection is open for research.

Publication rights: Copyright assigned to Tougaloo College. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to MDAH Reference Services, Attention: Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Tougaloo College as the owner of the physical items and as the owner of the copyright in items created by the donor. Although the copyright was transferred by the donor, the respective creator may still hold copyright in some items in the collection. For further information, contact Reference Services.

Copyright notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

Preferred citation: The Kudzu Collection (T/019), Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

 

History:

The Kudzu

The Kudzu was an underground newspaper published from 1968 to 1972 by the Mississippi Student News Project in Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi. The paper published thirty-three issues in all, nearly half of them in its first year.

A central figure in the formation and continued publication of The Kudzu was David Doggett. Doggett was raised in northern Mississippi and the state’s Delta region, moving frequently due to his father’s career as a Methodist minister. He graduated from high school in Tupelo, Lee County, in 1964 and entered Millsaps College in Jackson that fall. By his sophomore year, Doggett had become a prominent campus civil rights activist.

In the summer of 1966, Doggett became involved with the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), a Nashville-based activist group in existence from 1964 to 1969. Affiliated with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), SSOC was created as a civil rights group aimed at organizing and reaching out to white Southerners, in contrast to the Northern-dominated SDS and the African American-led Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

After graduating from Millsaps in 1968, Doggett began working as a full-time paid organizer for SSOC in Mississippi. By then he had been involved with the production of several short-lived, politically-oriented campus publications, and decided to focus most of his organizing efforts on publishing a more formal underground paper in Jackson. He directed Mississippi’s portion of SSOC funding toward this cause. Doggett first spent a month in Atlanta, Georgia, working with the staff of that city’s underground newspaper, the Great Speckled Bird. Upon his return to Jackson, he and Millsaps student Everett Long founded The Kudzu. The first issue was published on September 18, 1968. No printer in Jackson was willing to take on the publication, so it was produced in New Orleans by the printer of the Louisiana Weekly, an African American newspaper.

The Kudzu featured reporting on issues related to civil, women’s, and student rights; labor movements; anti-war activism; police harassment; drugs; and sexuality. There was a particular focus on developments in Mississippi, especially in Jackson and at college campuses around the state. One of the most prominent local events covered by the paper was the 1970 violence at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) that led to the police shooting of two unarmed youths at a women’s dormitory. In addition to political stories, The Kudzu published poetry, comics, and music reviews, as well as reports and commentary on counterculture events in Mississippi. Also published were short pieces from the Liberation News Service and the Underground Press Syndicate, nationwide alternative press associations to which The Kudzu belonged.

The Kudzu staff organized “The First Annual Mississippi Youth Jubilee” in spring 1969 on the campus of the former Mount Beulah College in Edwards, Hinds County, which was at the time leased by the Delta Ministry, a civil rights project sponsored by the National Council of Churches. The event featured speakers; discussion groups; and films on topics such as student rights and police harassment. Local rock bands performed in the evening. The Jubilee was a success, attracting around 300 people, and a second Jubilee was held the following year.

During the course of The Kudzu's existence, members of the paper’s staff were arrested many times while selling the publication. Various staff members were involved in years-long court cases resulting from some of these incidents. Those arrested included Doggett, Cassell Carpenter, Bill Rusk, Bill Peltz, David Sansing, and Michael McNamara. Jackson police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) both raided Doggett’s apartment while it was serving as the newspaper’s office.

The Kudzu struggled financially throughout its entire run, and by 1970 the staff realized the paper would never be self-supporting. They thus made plans for a biracial youth community center as a focal point for activism in Jackson. The organizers intended to run the newspaper on the side while generating revenue from the center, which would house music, book, and craft stores. The facility, called Edge City, opened on Gallatin Street in downtown Jackson in early 1971. Though successful at first, the center faced numerous challenges to its continued operation, such as the high expenses necessary to comply with city building codes and other legal regulations. By a year later the center’s organizers had run out of money to continue. Doggett and Rusk were by then The Kudzu's only remaining staff members. With the closing of Edge City, the two saw no sustainable path forward for the paper and decided to cease publication. The paper’s last issue was dated May 1, 1972. Doggett gave the paper’s remaining files to the Delta Ministry and left the state.

 

Scope and Content Note:

This collection consists of papers related to The Kudzu, an underground newspaper published in Jackson, Mississippi; a large number of photographs intended for possible use in the publication; and printed material, mostly created or collected by activist organizations. The printed material includes items such as articles, reports, flyers, correspondence, press releases, newsletters, brochures, and newsclippings. Some of the organizations documented are the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), anti-Vietnam War groups, the Liberation News Service, and the University Christian Movement.

 

Series Identification:

Series 1: The Kudzu, 1968-1970; n.d.
This series contains papers related directly to the The Kudzu newspaper. Notable items are a legal complaint filed by staff members David Doggett and Cassell Carpenter against Jackson city officials after their arrests on obscenity charges (box 1, folder 1) and a handwritten note detailing FBI harassment of The Kudzu staff members (box 1, folder 2). The series also includes mailings to the The Kudzu from the Radical Research Center and the New England Free Press (box 1, folder 3) and photocopies of advertising materials from other underground newspapers (box 1, folder 4). Also included is one issue of the The Kudzu, dated December 9, 1968 (box 3, folder 1). All issues of the paper are available on microfilm at MDAH.

Box 1, folders 1-4
Box 3, folder 1

 

Series 2: Photographs, 1968-1971; n.d.
This series (box 1, folders 5-18) consists primarily of photographs and contact sheets of photographs taken by The Kudzu staff members. Photographers named on the reverse sides of photographs include Cassell Carpenter, Nancy Davis, Bill Peltz, Bill Rusk, Phil Seymour, and K. Wells. Also included are publicity photographs for musical artists, groups, and albums. A few clippings and a postcard, which contain photographs or images apparently intended for reprinting in The Kudzu, are intermingled with the photographs.

The photographs by The Kudzu staff mostly document concerts, festivals, protests, or other mass events the newspaper covered. These include the 1968 “Love-In” at Jackson’s Riverside Park (folder 11), the 1969 Newark Love Festival (folder 13), and the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival (folder 12). Two photographs show a rally for “freedom of the student press” held November 23, 1970, probably at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Oktibbeha County (folders 10, 13). Other notable photographs in the series include one of staff members selling The Kudzu on Capitol Street in downtown Jackson (folder 5), and one of David Doggett’s apartment after a police raid (folder 8).

The reverse sides of most The Kudzu staff photographs are labeled with photographers’ names. Some photographs include dates or other information about their contents, but most are undated. Many include notations related to the pictures’ placement in the paper.

Musical artists and groups pictured in either performance or publicity photographs include David Bowie, the Byrds, Johnny Cash, the Chambers Brothers, John Fogerty, Janis Joplin, Emil Richards, Santana, and the Who, among many others. One photograph of Joplin shows her reading The Kudzu (folder 13).

Box 1, folders 5-18

 

Series 3: Printed Material, 1965-1972; n.d.
This series contains printed material created or distributed by a variety of political or activist organizations. The most prominent of these are the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and its affiliated organizations as well as anti-Vietnam war groups. Also included are some photocopied newsletters and newsclippings.

Material created or distributed by the SDS or two of its allied organizations, Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) and the Social Science Advancement Institute (SSAI), includes an SDS handbook (box 1, folder 19); several reports and proposals detailing the conflict between the SDS and SSOC (box 1, folder 20); reading lists, schedules, and correspondence from a seminar held by SSAI (box 1, folder 21); and articles distributed by the SDS or SSOC (box 1, folders 22-23). Also included with this material is a blank application for enrollment in the Mississippi State Christian College in Jackson (box 1, folder 19). Only the SSAI materials and SDS articles are originals; the rest of these items are photocopies.

The anti-Vietnam war material consists of an organizers’ manual and project profiles from the 1967 Vietnam Summer project (box 1, folders 24-25); and memoranda, news releases, correspondence, reports, and articles created by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (box 1, folders 26-27). Some of the correspondence, one memorandum, and one report (box 1, folder 26) are photocopies; the rest of this material is original.

Original items documenting other organizations (boxes 2-3) include news releases and a booklet published by the Liberation News Service; and newsletters, brochures, and flyers published or collected by the University Christian Movement. Photocopied items include a newsletter and a report on the SDS published by the Radical Education Project; a newsletter published by the Mississippi Council on Human Relations; and a United States federal indictment against members of the White Panther Party along with news releases from the group. Also included is part of a poster advertising an event sponsored by the Afro American Cultural Club at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi.

The photocopied newsletters were published by the Freedom Information Service and the Hinds County Freedom Democratic Party. The photocopied newsclippings mostly relate to George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign, and some have flyers about the 1967 murder of Ben Brown at Jackson State photocopied on their reverse sides. The majority of the clippings come from newspapers available in MDAH microfilm holdings, where most of the newsletters are available as well.

Box 1, folders 19-27
Box 2
Box 3, folder 2

 

Box List:

Box 1 Folder 1: Civil complaint, Cassell Carpenter et al. v. Allen C. Thompson, Mayor of Jackson, et al. (The Kudzu staff members v. Jackson city officials), 1968.
Folder 2: Handwritten note, 1970.
Folder 3: Correspondence and brochure from Radical Research Center and New England Free Press, 1969; n.d.
Folder 4: Advertising materials for other underground newspapers, 1968-1970; n.d.
Folders 5-10: Photographs, contact sheets, clippings, and postcard, 1968-1971; n.d.
Folder 11: Photographs, Riverside Park, 1968.
Folder 12: Photographs and contact sheets, Atlanta Pop Fest, July 1970.
Folder 13: Photographs, 1969-1970; n.d.
Folder 14: Promotional photographs, n.d.
Folder 15: Photographs and clipping, 1969; n.d.
Folders 16-18: Photographs, “Pop Rock Groups and Hippie Pictures,” 1969; n.d.
Folder 19: SDS Chapter Organizers’ Handbook; Mississippi State Christian College application, 1966; n.d.
Folder 20: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) reports and proposals, n.d.
Folder 21: Social Science Advancement Institute Inter-Collegiate Seminar, “Community Development and Social Change,” 1966.
Folder 22: Articles distributed by the SDS, 1966-1967.
Folder 23: Article, “The KKK as an Exploited Class,” and literature list distributed by SSOC, 1969.
Folder 24: Vietnam Summer Organizers’ Manual, 1967.
Folder 25: Vietnam Summer: Project Profiles, 1967.
Folder 26: Vietnam Moratorium Committee correspondence, memorandum, and report, 1969-1970.
Folder 27: Vietnam Moratorium Committee news releases, memorandum, and articles, 1969-1970.

Box 2
Folder 1: Liberation News Service (LNS) press releases, 1967.
Folder 2: Guerilla-Street Theater, booklet published by LNS, n.d.
Folder 3: Wind and Chaff, journal of the University Christian Movement (UCM), 1966-1967.
Folder 4: University Christian Movement (UCM) newsletters, flyer, and brochures, 1966-1969.
Folder 5: Communication to the Movement, report by the Radical Education Project (REP) Collective, 1969.
Folder 6: Radical Education Project (REP) Collective newsletter, 1967.
Folder 7: The Interpreter, Mississippi Council on Human Relations, 1967.
Folder 8: White Panther Party indictment, news releases, and article, 1969.
Folder 9: Poster portion, Jones County Junior College Afro American Cultural Club, 1972.
Folder 10: Newsletters, Freedom Information Service (FIS) and Hinds County Freedom Democratic Party, 1967-1968.
Folder 11: FIS information sheets, Ben Brown flyers, and George Wallace clippings, 1965-1968.
Folder 12: Jackson Daily News clipping on Mississippi Legislature report, 1971.

Box 3
Folder 1: The Kudzu, December 9, 1968.
Folder 2: Poster, Ashram ’67 (conference attended by UCM members), 1967.