North Carolina Anvil

The North Carolina Anvil (or simply The Anvil) was an alternative weekly newspaper, subtitled "a weekly newspaper of politics and the arts," published out of Durham, North Carolina from April 15, 1967 to August 11, 1983.^[1]

Origins

The Anvil was begun by publisher Robert V. "Bob" Brown (June 10, 1933 – February 5, 2006), who had previously published a mimeographed civil rights newsletter, Chapel Hill Conscience, during 1963–1964, and the literary magazine Reflections from Chapel Hill, and award-winning poet and fiction writer Leon Rooke, who had been employed in the News Bureau of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and had been the fiction editor for Reflections.^[2][3] In 1969, Rooke left The Anvil, moving to Canada so that his wife could take a teaching position at the University of Victoria.^[4] Brown remained at the editorial helm for the remainder of The Anvil's run, retiring in 1983.

Focus

Similar to other alt-weeklies or underground newspapers of the era, like The Berkeley Barb and The Village Voice, The North Carolina Anvil focused on arts and entertainment as well as reporting of local political, social, and economic issues for the area in and around The Triangle of North Carolina. Although its politics were comparatively moderate and it was unlike other underground papers in both style and content, The Anvil was a member of both the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service. Its circulation in the mid-1970s was reported at 8000 copies.^[5]

References

1. State Library of North Carolina and North Carolina State Archives - North Carolina Newspaper Project Archived December 30, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
2. Bob Brown obituary
3. White Gloves of the Doorman: The Works of Leon Rooke (Exile Editions, 2004), p. 7-8. Retrieved May 4, 2010.
4. Leon Rooke Website - Biography
5. From radical left to extreme right: a bibliography of current periodicals of protest, controversy, advocacy, or dissent (Campus Publishers, 1976), vol. 2, p. 610.