Allen Ginsberg

On October 3, 1957, the California State Superior Court ruled that Allen Ginsberg's book Howl and Other Poems was not obscene. The landmark decision followed the obscenity trial of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who had published the work through his City Lights bookshop in San Francisco. The ruling is remembered as a milestone for free expression, and Ginsberg drew the poem partly from a peyote vision of San Francisco's Sir Francis Drake hotel.