On April 3, 1955, The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg’s controversial poem “Howl.” The poem was brought under fire for references to homosexuality, drugs and the counterculture revolution broiling in the 1950s with the Beat generation.
With ACLU support, the obscenity trail resulted in the poem’s favor, with literary experts testifying and the judge ultimately ruling that “Howl” contains enough “redeeming social importance” to be distributed.
 
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