Stephen Gaskin
As a Korean War veteran turned-Beatnik, Stephen Gaskin, born in 1935, attended San Francisco State College on a GI Bill scholarship, earning a Master’s degree in 1964. He became an English professor, and, in 1967, started an informal philosophy seminar known as Monday Night Class, which drew a big following. Concerned that San Francisco was slipping into drug-induced decadence, he and 300 followers caravanned to Tennessee to found The Farm collective on 1,000 acres. In the 1970s, approximately 1,500 people lived there, keeping no liquor, guns, or chemical drugs; eating only vegetarian food; practicing meditation; and working for the collective. In 1976, he married Ina May Middleton, who [as Ina May Gaskin] wrote Spiritual Midwifery (1978) and, with her students, delivered 2,300 babies at The Farm. The Farm survived disease, hunger, serious debts, and Gaskin’s yearlong incarceration for growing marijuana; today, with 175 members who pay rent and have jobs outside, The Farm runs a press and produces radiation detectors used by law enforcement. Gaskin died at home in Summertown, Tennessee, on July 1, 2014, at age 79.
