Description
The Diane Solomon Civil Rights and Viet Nam War Era Button Collection represent the history of social and political movements
during the 1960s and 1970s. Political buttons have been used for centuries as a means to support political candidates and
later became popular in promoting specific social causes. Political buttons, pins, fobs and banners were very popular and
inexpensive to produce. The buttons in the collection represent many of the social and political movements of the 1960's and
1970's, including the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-war movement in Vietnam, feminism and women’s rights, the war on poverty,
immigrant and farm labor, gay rights, and the counterculture movement in San Francisco. Images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Bobby Seal,
Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, Cesar Chavez, are well represented, as well as the Black Panther
Party, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the National Organization
of Women (NOW), and many others. A small collection of newspapers documenting San Jose State University and Martin Luther
King Jr. are included.
Background
Diane Solomon is a local journalist and political activist in San Jose, California. Solomon attended San Jose State College
as a student of New College, an experimental four-year libral arts program, and later she received a Masters degree. She developed
an early interest in political and social movements and at age 14 she started collecting political buttons. Solomon continues
the hobby of button collecting, while working as a freelance journalist, accountant, and as the radio host of “A Meeting of
the Ways, on Radio KKUP.
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to the San José State University Library Special Collections & Archives. All requests for
permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Director of Special Collections. Permission
for publication is given on behalf of the SJSU Special Collections & Archives as the owner of the physical items and is not
intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Copyright restrictions
also apply to digital reproductions of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research and educational
purposes.