[1] Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner had previously collaborated on Radical America, but after they moved to different locations, their letters to each other led to the idea for Cultural Correspondence.
According to Buhle, the magazine was "born from the collapse of the New Left and hopes for a new beginning of a social movement, but also of left-wing thinking about culture".
[2] The first issue was introduced as such by the founding editors:[3] Here we are, a few months late and several theoretical documents short of where we expected to be by this time.
We expect to come out quarterly; perhaps CC will become a journal in time or perhaps only a way of advancing the notions of a cultural front within a Resurgent socialist movement.
Cultural Correspondence typically published leftist social commentary, with a particular emphasis on poetry, humor, and comics.
Contributors to the magazine included: C. L. R. James, George Lipsitz, Edith Hoshino Altbach, Eva Cockcroft, and R. Crumb.