Radical Times: Celebrating 50 Years of The Fifth Estate Tonight

It was 1965, and the country was smitten with an import called the Beatles.  President Lyndon Baines Johnson was beginning to double down on the war effort in Vietnam. And in Detroit, the toxic mix of racial strife, cries of police brutality and socioeconomic disparity became a precursor for what would become a historic riot seen round the world.

Enter Harvey Ovshinsky, 17. 

A 1965 Mumford High School graduate, the left-leaning Ovshinsky launched an underground newspaper called The Fifth Estate, which still publishes as a quarerly "anarchist magazine."

On Thursday,  the Detroit Historical Museum at 5401 Woodward Ave. concludes its yearlong exhibition commemorating the publication's 50th anniversary with a free two-hour event, “I Spy: the Fifth Estate under Surveillance.” Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the program begins at 7 p.m. Parking also is free.

"Long before the internet revolutionized how newspapers reported the news," a media release says, "1960s’ so-called underground papers of the era, like Detroit’s Fifth Estate, were the original media disrupters. These were hip, exciting, angry, iconoclastic newspapers that gave full-throttle coverage to the growing counterculture, anti-Vietnam War, civil rights, and gay and women's rights movements. Writing with purpose and passion, the Fifth Estate began in Detroit in 1965, and is the only one of the 500 from that era continuing to publish today."

Harvey Ovshinsky

The program will be moderated by Tim Kiska, Detroit media critic and and associate professor of journalism at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and co-curator of the yearlong exhibition titled,  “Start the Presses: 50 years of the Fifth Estate.” Rana Elmir, the deputy director of the ACLU of Michigan will discuss her organization’s efforts to protect local groups from police and FBI surveillance.

Fifth Estate founder Ovshinsky and current staffer Peter Werbe, a long-time fixture of the Detroit radio scene, will tell stories and read from their own files and from the paper’s infamous Red Squad files; thousands of pages of surveillance and intelligence reports about the paper’s alleged subversive activities. Those in attendance will also be encouraged to read aloud their files.

Back then, Red Squads around the country were law enforcement intelligence units that infiltrated, surveilled and gathered information on political and social groups.

Werbe and Ovshinsky will also discuss the Fifth Estate staffer in the 1960s who was a police informant. Before the event, they still were not sure whether they were going to publicly disclose his name during the event.

In 1965, Ovshinsky enrolled at Wayne State University and started up the Fifth Estate to write about pressing issues of the times including civil rights, the Vietnam war and women's rights, subjects he says the Detroit News and Free Press didn't do a very good job covering.

"My dad loaned me $300 for the printing," he recalls, adding that after six weeks, he dropped out of college so he could focus on the paper.

Peter Werbe

"I just could not do both. I really wanted to publish the paper," he says.“I loved the doing the Fifth Estate. It was such a new experience for me to put out my own newspaper and report on stuff that was important to me, and to help the community.”

First he published every two weeks, and then eventually weekly, and sold the paper for 10 cents. After a short time, he got help from radical John Sinclair and wife Leni. After about six months, Peter Werbe, a dropout from Michigan State University,  joined in as well.

In 1968, Ovshinsky was drafted, but was granted conscientious objector status, which required him to serve the country in some other way. So he left the Fifth Estate and start working as a psychiatric nursing attendant at Lafayette Clinic, a state-run psychiatric hospital near Greektown in Detroit. 

Werby continued to help run the paper.

"I started the paper, but Peter saved it," Ovshinsky says.

Both Ovshinksy and Werbe have gone on to have successful careers in the media.

In 1970, at age 22, Ovshinsky became the first news director of WABX -FM radio. He went on to host three popular talk shows on Detroit; Harvey O on the Metro on WDET-FM and Night Call and Spare Change on WRIF-FM.

He went on to become a screenwriter and award-winning documentary producer and production executive at Detroit Public Television and a special writer for both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.

Werbe has worked for a number of the big stations in Detroit, including WRIF. He is public affairs director for the local Greater Media stations, which include WRIF, WCSX and 105.1 FM.  He also hosts WRIF's "Nightcall" on Sundays at 11 p.m., the longest running phone-in talk show in American radio history.