Today in Labor History October 3, 1957: The California State Superior Court ruled that the book Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg, was not obscene. The poem was based, in part, on a horrifying peyote hallucination he had of the glitzy Sir Frances Drake hotel, in San Francisco, morphing into a child-eating demon. The poem’s references to drug use and to homosexuality are what provoked the obscenity trial. City Lights bookstore own and publisher of Howl, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and bookstore manager, Shig Murao, were arrested on obscenity charges for selling the book.
