Collection Stories: Symbolizing Protest

To help mark the occasion of Historic New England’s 115th anniversary in 2025, we are sharing some of our favorite collection stories from Historic New England magazine—which turns twenty-five this year. This month, we revisit the the striking acquisition of an original raised fist protest shirt, donated by architect Henry Moss, who was involved in designing the symbol.

In April 1969 after Cambridge, Massachusetts, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from a peaceful occupation of University Hall at Harvard University, a group of students at the Graduate School of Design saw the need for a graphic feature to symbolize solidarity with the protesters. About a dozen students worked together to come up with a design, eventually agreeing on the raised fist—a symbol that had been used in protest at least since the early years of the nineteenth century. After the group rejected one design as being too abstract, student Harvey Hacker drew his own raised right fist. The students agreed on this design and, with borrowed equipment from a local art supply store, they taught themselves silk screening and began to produce shirts and posters.

SDS used Harvard’s prominence to draw worldwide attention to its antiwar protest. The group demanded that the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) be banned from the university and called for an end to faculty members’ involvement in classified defense research. The eighteen-hour occupation of University Hall ended in the violent police takeover of the building. While effectively ousting the approximately 500 student protesters from the building, the police action crystallized support on campus for the demands of SDS and a nine-day, campus-wide strike ensued. While the short-term effects of the protests were negligible, the long-term effects were considerable and included stripping ROTC of its privileges, elevating the black studies program to departmental status, and the eventual ouster of Harvard’s president, Nathan M. Pusey.

One of the graduate design school students involved in developing the design and producing the shirts and posters was architect Henry Moss, who recently donated his shirt to Historic New England.

Written by Nancy Carlisle, Curator Emeritus

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of Historic New England magazine. Check the blog monthly for new posts in our Collection Stories series.