The Bill Bachmann papers contain correspondence, writings, newspaper clippings, and ephemera related to radical political movements in the early 1970s and mid-1990s. The bulk of the collection documents left-wing political involvement at the University of Michigan and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from about 1969-1972, including correspondence addressed to Bachmann in his role as publisher of the "Up Against the Wall Street Journal", essays, and event and informational flyers. Also present are typed meeting minutes from the National Organization for Women's Detroit chapter (July 1973-July 1974), an interview with Carl Hessler regarding the Flint sit-down strike (undated), and flyers and articles related to the Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Bill Bachmann was a graduate student and teaching fellow in economics at the University of Michigan between 1968 and 1972. He was active in antiwar and anti-repression demonstrations and movements, including the movement to abolish ROTC and the Black Action Movement Strike of 1970. In early 1970, Bachmann, alongside other left-wing students, started a paper called Up Against the Wall Street Journal, which Bachmann describes as a consciously political paper with a working class orientation. After the dissolution of Up Against the Wall Street Journal, Bachmann joined the International Socialists, participated in the founding of Love & Rage, and later became a member of the Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists.
In 1972, Bachmann left Ann Arbor for New York, where he began a career repairing equipment in the Post Office. Since 1995, he has been an advocate for Mumia Abu-Jamal. He is part of the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal coalition, and authored and co-authored resolutions supporting Abu-Jamal passed by the American Postal Workers Union in 2000 and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 2004, respectively.
