Pentagon Demonstration
(3 images)
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Roz Payne took this photograph at the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
October 21, 1967
From Dissent to Resistance
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This button commemorates the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
button
No More Bullshit
Electoral Politics
In 1969, at the prompting of feminist leader, Gloria Steinam, author, cultural critic and activist, Norman Mailer, made an outsider bid for mayor of New York City. His campaign ran as a ticket with Jimmy Breslin, the raucous New York Daily News journalist who was seeking to become the President of the New York City Council. At the time, New York was facing a growing list of problems, including rising crime rates, increasing poverty and deindustrialization, middle-class suburban flight, congestion, pollution and political stagnation. In response, Mailer, whose campaign slogans were “No More Bullshit” and “Throw the Rascals In,” set out an outlandishly bold set of initiatives. His primary proposal was the “51st State” plan, a scheme whereby the five boroughs of New York would secede from the rest of the state in a bid to secure more independence, greater political representation, resources and power. Once independent, Mailer envisioned a radically decentralized political order with the city “splintering into townships and neighborhoods, with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies." In addition, he advocated a ban on private cars in Manhattan, replacing them with cabs and a monorail system that would circle the island; a citywide free bicycle rental program; and policies that would eliminate pollution, reduce taxes, and establish full autonomy for public schools. According to campaign literature, at the collegiate level, the campaign promoted “vest-pocket campuses built by students in abandoned buildings” that would restore “a sense of personal involvement that is lost in the large university campuses.” In perhaps his most utopian proposal, Mailer urged the creation of “Sweet Sundays,” which would mandate, once a month, that all mechanical transportation stop and elevators close down so that New Yorkers could decompress from their hectic urban lives and avoid breathing exhaust fumes.
Campaign events were often chaotic. At one, Mailer quipped, "The difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm no good and I can prove it." At another, he called his own supporters “spoiled pigs.” After learning that bars would be closed on election day, Jimmy Breslin complained, “I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed.”
Many New Left activists and libertarians supported the Mailer-Breslin ticket. The Black Panther Party also endorsed the duo after they backed the release of Panther leader, Huey Newton. To some, the campaign was a lark, to other a serious challenge to the established order, and to others an outright offense.
In the end, Mailer finished in fourth place during the Democratic mayoral primary, edging out state Assemblyman, Charles B. Rangel, who would go on to be elected to Congress in 1970 and remain in office until 2017. Even in defeat, though, Mailer’s campaign was seen by many leftists and libertarians as an important attempt to move from the realm of ideas into programmatic politics.
________________
Norman Mailer first gained fame in 1948 with the publication of his now-classic war novel, The Naked and the Dead, which was based in part on his own WWII experiences. In 1955, he was a part of a small group that established The Village Voice, an influential alternative newspaper located in Greenwich Village, which continued publication until 2018. Also an influential essayist, Mailer published “The White Negro” in Dissent in 1957, a controversial analysis of the “hipster” in post-war American culture.
Mailer became a ubiquitous cultural figure in the 1960s. In 1960, he published "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," an essay in Esquire on the rise of John F. Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention. He continued to see JFK as an “existential hero” for a new era. That same year, Mailer was convicted of assault for the stabbing of his wife, Adele, and served three years of probation. Mailer was also one of 29 prominent Americans who co-founded the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed the hardline anti-Castro stance of U.S. politicians and military leaders during the early-1960s. The group achieved widespread infamy in 1963, when it became public news that Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a member. In 1967, Mailer made a mark with the best-selling political book, Why Are We in Vietnam? and played an ongoing role in the anti-war movement, including signing the 1968 “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest,” a pledge to withhold tax payments to the U.S. government as opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Again that year, Mailer covered the turbulent Democratic and Republican National Conventions, work that he later published as, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968). In that book, Mailer portrays American politics cynically as a crass and self-interested exchange of political power. Reflecting back later on the party politics of the 1960s-era, Mailer wrote, "If you played for a team, you did your best to play very well, but there was something obscene… with starting to think there was more moral worth to Michigan than Ohio State." To Mailer, there was little difference between the disgraced Richard Nixon who left the White House after the Watergate scandal and Lyndon Johnson, whose liberal Great Society was derailed by the failed Vietnam war. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Mailer is also seen as a pioneer in what came to be known as the “New Journalism,” a form of creative nonfiction that used some of the style and devices of literary fiction to write fact-based journalism. His most significant work in this vein was Armies of the Night (1968), a nonfiction novel about the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. The book won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Mailer also wrote books about the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, a response to criticisms of him and other male authors by feminist author, Kate Millett, and an account of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,” the heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Forman in Zaire.
In 1979, Mailer published The Executioner’s Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize. The “true crime” novel focuses on the execution of Utah murderer, Gary Gilmore. His final novel, Harlot’s Ghost, published in 1991, explored the hidden history of the CIA from the end of WWII through the mid-1960s. Mailer, who also wrote drama and screenplays for films, died in 2007.
_____________________
Jimmy Breslin was an outspoken journalist and novelist who was known as a tough-talking representative of working-class residents in his hometown, Queens, New York. In 1962, Breslin wrote a best-selling book on the New York Mets baseball team, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? In 1963, he was covering southern civil rights activism in Selma, Alabama, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. While other journalists wrote stories about the fallen president, Breslin secured an interview with Malcolm Perry, the Parkland Hospital doctor who had tried to save him. He followed that up with a powerful column about Clifton Pollard, the man who dug Kennedy’s grave. As journalist David Shedden later wrote, “It’s a plainly told story -- no breathtaking sentences here -- but the style is effective in its Hemingway-esque directness. Breslin moves from the gravedigger’s perspective, to a more omniscient view of the funeral, back to the worker. We like the passage about Jackie Kennedy, its moving description of her particular, telling gestures. But the piece’s central power lies in Breslin’s juxtaposition of the cemetery workers, the small details of the scene’s sounds and sights, with the enormity of the event." From there, Breslin secured positions as a columnist for a succession of New York newspapers, gaining a reputation as a staunch opponent of corruption and injustice. Like Mailer, Breslin was seen as a pioneer of the New Journalism movement and often mixed his own experience with his journalistic reportage of political events. In 1969, he published the true-crime book, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, about mobster “Crazy Joe” Gallo and his band of bungling baddies. The book was made into a film in 1971.
Breslin continued to be an influential writer until his death in 2017. In 1973, he wrote another novel, World Without End, Amen. In 1977, Breslin again gained notoriety for a series of compelling articles on the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killer, David Berkowitz. In response to those essays and in the midst of his killing spree, Berkowitz wrote to Breslin: “Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks.” The murderer continued, “J.B., I’m just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous .44 killings. I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and find it quite informative.” In 1978, Breslin received a sizable advance to co-write a book about the Son of Sam murders with Dick Schaap, titled, .44. Many viewed the book as exploitative and in poor taste so soon after the traumatic events. In 1986, Breslin won a Pulitzer Prize, in part for his writing about the AIDS epidemic in New York City, as well his broader work championing the causes of ordinary people. In later decades, he published a memoir, I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me (1996), as well as a non-fiction account of a Mexican construction worker in New York who was killed on site when a building collapsed, The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez (2002), and a final book about the mafia, titled, The Good Rat (2008). Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith described Breslin, "like an Irish wind that has blown through Queens and Harlem and Mutchie's bar. It is a pound of Hemingway and a pound of Joyce and 240 pounds of Breslin." Following his death in 2017, Tom Wolfe called him, “incredible, the greatest newspaper columnist of my era.”
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
button
Stop the Trial
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This button refers to the trial of the Chicago 8. Following the turbulent demonstrations and police repression outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, eight antiwar activists – David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two less well-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines – were indicted by a grand jury indicted on March 20, 1969, and put on trial for conspiracy to cross state lines to cause a riot, teach the making of an incendiary device and commit acts to impede law enforcement officers in their lawful duties. Sixteen alleged co-conspirators - Wolfe B. Lowenthal, Stewart E. Albert, Sidney M. Peck, Kathy Boudin, Corina F. Fales, Benjamin Radford, Thomas W. Neumann, Craig Shimabukuro, Bo Taylor, David A. Baker, Richard Bosciano, Terry Gross, Donna Gripe, Benjamin Ortiz, Joseph Toornabene, and Richard Palmer - avoided prosecution.
The high-profile trial, which began on September 24, 1969, and lasted five months, quickly turned into a circus. The defendants, known initially as the Chicago 8, were represented by radical attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The judge was Julius Hoffman, and the prosecutors were Richard Schultz and Tom Foran. Bobby Seale repeatedly disrupted the trial because he could not have the lawyer of his choice, calling Judge Hoffman “racist” and a “fascist pig.” In response, Hoffman, who displayed a disdain for the defendants and the anti-war movement, more generally, bound, gagged and chained Seale to his chair in front of the jury for several days. Kunstler lambasted Judge Hoffman’s actions, saying, "This is no longer a court of order, Your Honor, this is a medieval torture chamber." Hoffman ultimately severed Seale’s case from the other seven defendants for a later trial, which never took place. He also sentenced Seale to four years imprisonment for contempt of court, one of the harshest punishments for that offense in U.S. history to that time. A U.S. Court of Appeals quickly overturned the ruling.
The trial of the seven remaining defendants, now known as the Chicago 7, became a cause celebre among New Left activists. The prosecution relied primarily on the testimony of undercover police officers and informants, who told the jury that they had heard various defendants state that they were planning to confront police during the convention and fight back against police aggression. Some claimed to have heard Froines and Weiner speak openly about making stink bombs and other incendiary devices.
According to a history of the case written for the Federal Judicial Center by historian, Bruce Ragsdale, “The defendants and their attorneys went well beyond the rebuttal of the criminal charges and sought to portray the proceedings as a political trial rather than a criminal prosecution. In their legal arguments, in their courtroom behavior, and in their numerous public appearances, they challenged the legitimacy of the court and the judge as well as the substance of the indictment. The trial became for the defense an opportunity to portray the dissent movement that had converged on Chicago for the Democratic Convention.” Defense attorneys called more than 100 witnesses to the stand, including a number of anti-war and countercultural celebrities, like Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Dick Gregory, William Styron, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Rev. Jesse Jackson. SDS leader, Tom Hayden, attempted to observe courtroom decorum and offer reasonable arguments to refute the prosecutions claims, but Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, exploited the trial for political theater, consistently disrupting the proceedings, dressing in costumes, eating jelly beans, blowing kisses at jurors, cracking jokes and insulting the judge. As civil rights attorney, Ron Kuby, recalled at William Kunstler’s 1995 funeral, “While defending the Chicago Seven, [Kunstler] put the war in Vietnam on trial—asking Judy Collins to sing "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" from the witness stand, placing a Viet Cong flag on the defense table, and wearing a black armband to commemorate the war dead.”
Much of the trial turned on procedural arguments that usually went against the defense counsel. Again, Ragsdale explains, “Even before the trial started, Judge Hoffman granted only thirty days for pretrial motions rather than the six months requested by the defense. The judge denied the defense attorneys’ access to government evidence obtained without a warrant and barred the defense from submitting the Lake Villa document in which Hayden and Davis set out their non- violent strategy. Judge Hoffman prohibited former Attorney General Ramsey Clark from testifying about his opposition to prosecution of demonstrators, and Hoffman sharply limited the defense lawyers’ ability to question Mayor Daley. Frequently the trial was interrupted by arguments over seemingly petty questions: Could the defendants distribute birthday cake in the courtroom? Could the defendants use the public restrooms, or should they be limited to the facilities in the holding rooms? Could the musician witnesses sing the songs they performed at demonstrations, or was the judge correct in insisting that they recite lyrics?”
At the end of the chaotic trial, the jury, made up of eleven whites and two African Americans, acquitted all seven defendants of conspiracy, but found Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Davis and Hayden guilty of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Froines and Weiner were acquitted of all charges. Judge Hoffman sentenced the remaining five defendants to the maximum penalty, five years in prison and a $5000 fine All seven defendants were also sentenced to prison time for contempt of court, including their attorney, William Kunstler. In a separate trial, a jury acquitted seven of the eight indicted policemen. The case against the eighth was dropped.
The contempt convictions were ultimately overturned on an appeal in 1972 and in a separate appeal all of the criminal convictions except for Bobby Seale’s were overturned. The appellate court cited the judge’s “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense’ as cause for the reversal. They censured Judge Hoffman and the government attorneys for their open hostility toward the defendants and their failure to fulfill “the standards of our system of justice.”
The legacy of the Chicago 8 trials was less legal than cultural. No clear legal precedents emerged from the cases, particularly with regard to the Anti-Riot Act of 1968, which was the main legal foundation for the prosecutions. Instead, the case has lived on as a cultural touchstone of a turbulent period in American history, adapted numerous times on the stage, in documentary form and as feature films.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
button
Chicago '68 Photos (541 images)
Chicago Democratic National Convention Demonstrations
Roz Payne took the more than 500 photos during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. The protests degenerated into a police riot when Democratic mayor and party stalwart, Richard Daley, ordered an estimated 23,000 riot-clad police officers to attack roughly 10,000 demonstrators in and near Grant Park. The chaos outside of the convention hall, which was broadcast across the country and around the world, took place against the backdrop of growing public opposition to America’s War in Vietnam, the blossoming of the anti-war movement, increasing disillusionment with the Democratic Party and what many viewed as the slow rate of meaningful social change, as well as the shocking assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, earlier that year. The tumultuous convention resulted in the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey and Edmund S. Muskie as his running-mate. Republican standard-bearer, Richard Nixon, won the fall election, capping one of the more unlikely political comebacks in recent U.S. history.
Images in this collection show a variety of protests, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Dick Gregory, Jerry Rubin, Pigasus, MC5, among others.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
August 1968
Confront the Warmakers
Anti-War Movement
This button commemorates the October 21, 1967 antiwar rally held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 demonstrators included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnsonretorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
National Mobilization Committee to End the War
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
Button
Physical Object
Confront the Warmakers October 21 Washington
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This button commemorates the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
National Mobilization Committee to End the War
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
Button
Physical Object
Confront the Warmakers Oct. 21
On October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave. ”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
National Mobilization Committee to End the War
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
Button
Physical Object
Confront the Warmakers
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster promotes the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations, including the Vietnam Peace Parade Committee in New York. The estimated 100,000 protesters who took place in the demonstration included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster