Halcyon, March 1971, Front Cover: CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

Halcyon, March 1971, Front Cover, from Halcyon Magazine Collection (William Rainey Harper College) in CARLI Digital Collections

If a book can be judged by its cover, then the photograph on the front of the student-published Halcyon (vol. 2, no. 3, March 1971) tells part of the story. Credited to underground press organizations Chicago Seed and Liberation News Service, the image documents—in black and white, overlaid with patriotic red and blue—the civil unrest, student protests, and racial tension of the era.

The back cover presents a startling contrast with “The Lovers,” a vividly colored card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Taken together, the covers juxtapose the extremes of the zeitgeist during the waning of the so-called Age of Aquarius ten months after Kent State: hate and love, war and peace.

The content between the covers further captures the spirit of ’71 with finger-on-the-pulse articles about Vietnam, pornography, communes, hotlines, drugs versus religion, mystics and sensitivity groups. Halcyon days, indeed.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Assistant Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

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