Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Founder of City Lights Bookstore, 1919 - 2021

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Founder of City Lights Bookstore at 261 Columbus near Broadway, passed away at age 101 Monday night, February 22, 2001. City Lights Bookstore was our beacon of peace, culture and hope in North Beach from 1953 to the present.

You can read the excellent tributes and biographies of him at:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/23/lawrence-ferlinghetti-poet-publisher-and-activist-dies-his-beloved-san-francisco-age

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/poet-lawrence-ferlinghetti-dead-at-101/

https://www.yahoo.com/now/lawrence-ferlinghetti-fearless-poet-publisher-021304859.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti

This writer remembers City Lights from the 1960s to the present. We could always find our socialist papers and magazines, news bulletins such as the San Francisco Tenants Union announcement of its formation and services in 1979 and thereafter, all books worth reading, from the Marxist-Leninist classics to the Black Renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, to the proliferation of books promoting peace with Vietnam, classics of literature in the English language, a huge poetry section on the top floor, children's books, and much more. He was among the first to promote paperback books when they were new in the 1950s, and became the norm as being much cheaper than hardcover books. For years, LaborFest had its annual poet reading festival at City Lights in July, commemorating the 1934 San Francisco General Strike.

He participated in all the progressive struggles of his time. Here he is on a list of writers protesting the American War Against Vietnam in the form of protesting the war tax:
https://nwtrcc.org/history/writers-and-editors-names.php
This is linked to:
https://nwtrcc.org/war-tax-resistance-resources/international-history-of-war-tax-resistance/1960s/

As soon as Nazi Trump was illegally installed in office in 2016, he had huge signs on City Lights Bookstore condemning Nazi Trump.

City Lights Bookstore is now an historic landmark. See https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/lawrence-ferlinghetti-poet-who-helped-launch-the-beat-movement-dies-at-101/ar-BB1dXjbd?ocid=uxbndlbing

Thank you, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for contributing so much to San Francisco and culture, defending the First Amendment, and being a home for all movements for peace, social justice, labor and the environment.