of confrontations with local authorities, and who were at the forefront of local cultural gatherings." Featured content The Rag featured news coverage and commentary on the War in Vietnam and the movement opposing it, the Civil Rights Movement, the student freedom movement, the development of the New Left and SDS, the psychedelic rock and folk music scenes, and the sixties counterculture movement, of which Austin was a major outpost. It also carried national and world news and opinion from Liberation News Service (LNS) and from other underground newspapers around the country. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Gilbert Shelton's iconic sixties comic strip, was born in The Rag and, thanks in part to the Underground Press Syndicate, was republished in underground papers and comic books all over the world. Artist Jim Franklin—whose surrealist armadillos helped to place the ugly little armored critters right up there with the longhorn as a symbol of Texas—designed many of the paper's covers, as did noted cartoonist and artist Kerry Awn. God Nose, a comic strip by Jack Jackson, ran in The Rag. Alan Pogue, now a documentary photographer, was a staff photographer for eight years. Over its lifespan, the paper evolved with the times, for a while becoming one of the strongest voices of the women's liberation movement and later focusing on local politics, covering Austin city government, neighborhood protests, and the labor movement. As Glenn Scott recalls about the later Rag, one "could not have imagined a more democratic process than a Rag copy meeting. An all-volunteer group of self-taught editors and copy writers debated the sexism and violence in pornography, the corporate influence in utility policies, and the CIA's involvement in Chile. And how much space went to the Free Clinic benefit and the Freak Brothers." Many of the underground newspapers met with establishment opposition, harassment, and even legal action. In Austin, the regents at the University of Texas sued The Rag to prevent circulation on campus. David Richards, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, successfully defended The Rags First Amendment rights before the U.S. Supreme Court. Impact on alternative media The Rag was one of the most influential of the early underground papers and, according to historian John McMillian, it served as a model for many papers that followed. The Rag was credited with being the first underground paper to successfully combine the radical politics of the New Left with the