The Diane Solomon Civil Rights and Viet Nam War Era Button Collection represent the history of social and political movements during the 1960s and 1970s. Political buttons have been used for centuries as a means to support political candidates and later became popular in promoting specific social causes. Political buttons, pins, fobs and banners were very popular and inexpensive to produce. The buttons in the collection represent many of the social and political movements of the 1960's and 1970's, including the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-war movement in Vietnam, feminism and women’s rights, the war on poverty, immigrant and farm labor, gay rights, and the counterculture movement in San Francisco. Images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Seal, Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, Cesar Chavez, are well represented, as well as the Black Panther Party, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the National Organization of Women (NOW), and many others. A small collection of newspapers documenting San Jose State University and Martin Luther King Jr. are included.