Fri Feb 10 2012

Button Collection Reflects an Era Freedoms of Speech and Assembly
by Al Feldstein
July 12, 2003

It has been over thirty-five years since Al Feldstein was a political science major at the University of Maryland. It was then, in 1967, he picked up his first protest button. He was attracted to the bright colors, the graphics of the period, and the contemporary history the button represented. Al went back to his dorm room and pinned the button on the strap of his arrow quiver for decoration. Other buttons followed. He did not know these would be the first of thousands of political cause, protest, social movement, and campaign buttons he would amass through the years. His collection now holds more than 8,000 buttons and is a visible portrayal of modern American history.

“I started collecting without even knowing that I was collecting,” Feldstein commented. “I started because it was interesting and fun.” People began asking Al to share his collection at their organization’s meetings, seminars, and exhibitions. He has worked with or contributed to the collections of several historical institutions, including the Smithsonian. Most recently he has been asked to set up a permanent display of buttons from the Vietnam era in a newly constructed museum established by the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 172, Cumberland, Maryland. As the decades have passed, what Al has discovered is that everywhere he takes his collection, the interest and response to the history portrayed in these small, shiny, colorful, metal objects is overwhelming. People remember the cause or the people of that time in their own lives. Young people are just as fascinated as history becomes a little more graphic for them. It also confirmed Feldstein’s long-held belief that these buttons are indeed a truly overlooked medium, and have a message to convey to people not just from his generation, but also to many young people today.

So he decided to share his passion and collection by creating a poster - Buttons of the Cause - 1960 - 2003 - The Events - The People - The Organizations - The Issues. Buttons of the Cause is a fascinating microcosm of American history and the issues that have faced American over the past 40 years. Feldstein selected over 370 buttons from his collection to portray an "historical overview of contemporary political and social protest and public policy debate via the visual and colorful medium of buttons." These include such issues and movements as Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Women’s Movement, the Environment, Animal Rights, Workers Rights, Africa, Ireland, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Globalization, Nuclear Disarmament, the American Indian Movement, and Gay and Lesbian Rights. For Feldstein, the buttons are a visually colorful portrayal of our First Amendment Freedoms of Speech and Assembly.

The buttons generally cover a time-period from the August 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., to the recent marches held against the war with Iraq, as well as the demonstrations against the World Bank. When possible Feldstein attempts to present both "sides." Using Vietnam as the prime example, he includes the "I’m Not Fonda Jane" and "Tell It to Hanoi" buttons along with the multitude of anti-war examples from that period.

“The poster is not meant to be an ideological or political statement as such of one side or the other. To be honest, I do have "issues" with a few of the causes, and in particular, one or two of the personalities, which I have depicted. Rather, I see this poster as an educational item. After forty years, much of this is now falling within an historical context. At the same time, all of these events, personalities, and issues are still front page news and a part of our daily popular culture; from the panel discussions, author interviews, and book reviews on C-SPAN, to the movies, books, and television shows being produced each year, to the newspaper headlines and features which are in our face each morning, to the actual issues, people, and causes which have evolved and impact us today,” Feldstein commented. “At the same time, this poster presents a strong sense of nostalgia and memory, bittersweet perhaps, for those generations that experienced this era.”

The horizontal format poster is 36x24 inches, a standard frame size. It’s printed on 80lb stock with an aqueous finish and in a High Resolution 4-color process. The buttons are reproduced at full-scale and in a montage format. In other words they are spread out and are "overlaid" on each other. Spanning the bottom are over 260 footnotes; events, milestones, dates, personalities, and organizations identified with the buttons or the issues. The poster is available through the web at www.buttonsofthecause.com .

Feldstein is a resident of western Maryland and popular local historian with more than two dozen regional history books published over the past 20 years. He and his wife, Angie, are the parents of two daughters and a son.

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