In 1955, Allen Ginsberg walked into City Lights bookstore in the North Beach area of San Francisco. He introduced himself to the owner, 37-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti perceived Ginsberg as another “far-out poet and wandering intellectual” who’d been hanging out in the bookstore since its opening in 1953. Nervous and self-effacing, Ginsberg presented a ragged hand-scrawled copy of his latest work Howl asking Ferlinghetti if he’d be interested in publishing the piece.
Two weeks later, Ferlinghetti attended a poetry reading at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street. The event included Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure and Philip Whalen. Poets read their work aloud and Jack Kerouac shouted encouragement while sipping a jug of red wine. Midway through the evening, Ginsberg offered his first public reading of Howl. His opening lines would become legendary:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…
Howl was a rebuke of post-war American morality. It was rhythmic and raw, referencing homosexuality, free love and illicit drug use. Ferlinghetti realized “the repressive, conformist, racist, homophobic world of the 1950s” needed to experience Howl in its apocalyptic fury. He decided to publish Howl through his new publishing outlet The Pocket Poets Series. Ferlinghetti sent a Western Union Telegram to Ginsberg writing, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do we get the manuscript?”
Howl and Other Poems was released by City Lights Publishers on October 1, 1956. Ferlinghetti suspected the manuscript would attract controversy due to its homosexual content. In June 1957, two undercover policemen entered City Lights Bookstore and purchased several copies of Howl. A few nights later, the store was raided by San Francisco police. Store manager Shigeyoshi Murao was arrested for offering an obscene book for sale. Ferlinghetti was in Big Sur at the time but later turned himself in. Both men faced a $500 charge and potential six-month jail sentence. (Ginsberg was in Tangiers and not charged.)
The raid thrust City Lights Bookstore into national headlines. Media outlets labeled City Lights an “anarchist bookstore” and “revolutionary publishing house.” This was an unexpected turn for Ferlinghetti and his humble store that was just three years old.
Ferlinghetti had served as captain on a submarine chaser during World War II. After the war, he earned an M.A. degree in English at Columbia. He spent several years in Paris then moved to San Francisco in 1951. He fell in love with North Beach and its bohemian cafes and Italian restaurants. He met a fledgling group of young writers and poets dedicated to pacifism and Eastern thought. The early leader of the movement was Kenneth Rexroth who hosted an anarchist-influenced radio show on KPFA-FM. Rexroth invited writers to his North Beach apartment for Friday night literary gatherings.
Meeting these young writers rekindled a dream in Ferlinghetti’s heart. He always wanted to open a bookstore. In June 1953, while wandering North Beach, Ferlinghetti came across a small storefront at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Kearny Street. A man was putting up a sign that read City Lights Pocket Bookshop. The man was Peter Martin, a San Francisco State sociology professor. Martin published a literary magazine called City Lights (named after Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 film).
Ferlinghetti introduced himself. Martin said the soon-to-be-open business would be the first all-paperback bookshop in the country. Ferlinghetti and Martin hit it off and agreed to a partnership. They each invested $500. Two years later, Ferlinghetti purchased Martin’s share of the business for $1000 and renamed the store City Lights.
Ferlinghetti focused on books and magazines challenging mainstream American values. The early days were a struggle though the store became a gathering ground for local poets, artists and activists. Shigeyoshi Murao, the bookstore manager, had been incarcerated with his family during the war in a Japanese-American internment camp. Murao’s affable personality permeated the store offering a relaxed environment open to outsiders and alternative types.
When Murao was arrested during the police raid, he and his Japanese family considered his arrest a badge of shame. Ferlinghetti was more interested in clearing Murao’s name than his own. The obscenity trial began in the summer of 1957. Ferlinghetti and Murao were defended pro bono by famed criminal lawyer Jake Erlich and the ACLU.
At the time of the trial, the legal definition of obscenity was “material that as a whole appealed to a prurient interest in sex, judged by standards of the community for an average person.” Prurient was defined generally as sexual content. A recent US Supreme Court ruling (Roth vs. US) declared that “sex and obscenity are not synonymous.” Erlich had only to prove that Howl had redeeming social importance and was thus protected by the First Amendment.
Erlich called UC Berkeley professor Mark Schorer as a witness. Schorer stated that Howl was “an indictment of elements in modern society that, in the author’s view, are destructive of the best qualities in human nature and the best minds.” Schorer compared Ginsberg to playwright Bertolt Brecht and anti-war filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The trial lasted two months. On October 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled Howl wasn’t obscene and of redeeming social importance. Horn stated that though “there are a number of words presently considered coarse and vulgar, I do not believe that Howl is without redeeming social importance.” Ferlinghetti, Murao and City Lights Bookstore were all exonerated.
Media attention catapulted City Lights into the national consciousness. Howl became a bestseller with more than 20,000 copies sold in 1958 alone. The court decision paved the way for publication of previously censored works such as Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Trial publicity brought fame for Ginsberg and elevated the Beat Generation into prominence.
Ferlinghetti died in 2021 at the age of 101. City Lights remains a San Francisco literary presence. The Bookstore turned 72 this year. Tour buses still stop outside telling visitors they might spot a genuine San Francisco beatnik if they look carefully.