1967 On
New Year's Eve 1967, a group of one thousand people accompanied by music and geese burned down a
Christmas tree in Central Park. The city's parks commissioner,
Thomas P.F. Hoving, was present at the event. About this demonstration, he stated, "We're going to do this again... you know, it's old hat to go to Times Square when we can have such a wonderful happening in Central Park". The Easter 1967 be-in was organized by
Jim Fouratt, an actor; Paul Williams, editor of
Crawdaddy! magazine; Susan Hartnett, head of the
Experiments in Art and Technology organization; and Claudio Badal, a Chilean poet and playwright. With a budget of $250 they printed 3,000 posters and 40,000 small notices designed by
Peter Max and distributed them around the city. The event was guarded by small number of police. The protesters made their way from Central Park to the U.N., where speeches were given by several leaders including
Benjamin Spock,
James Bevel, and
Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King declared that the war in Vietnam was a "conflict against a coloured people" and that "white Americans are not going to deal in the problems of coloured people when they're exterminating a whole nation of coloured people". Although there were five arrests made during this demonstration, they were of counter-demonstrators who staged an Anti-Communist rally. Around 75 protesters burned their
draft cards.
1969 During the early 1969 Be-In/Peace Rally,
The Village Voice reported that there was said to be between 15,000 and 20,000 people in attendance. This be-in became more radical than the other be-ins that previously took place in Central Park, as
bonfires erupted. One person described Sheep Meadow as having "the aura of a bombed out battlefield". Things became worse when a person leapt into one of the bonfires. When he was finally pulled from the bonfires by other demonstrators, word came out that an ambulance would not arrive until Sheep Meadow was cleared. Because the crowd would not disperse, the man had to be carried through the crowd to be transported to the hospital. Three police officers were injured when the demonstrators hit them with rocks. The Be-In on April 6, 1969, was recorded by
Irv Teibel and released on his
Environments (album series). In November 1969, protesters took a different approach and organized a lie-in at Sheep Meadow in Central Park. About three thousand protesters laid out blankets on Sheep meadow and held white and black balloons used to symbolize those killed and those potentially killed in the war in Vietnam. This lie-in was met with opposition from some city officials and some members of the general public. The demonstrators were met with this opposition because of the message that they were trying to get across and because of the usage of the city's
public space.
1970 On June 28, 1970, there was a massive Gay Be-In held in Sheep Meadow to commemorate the first anniversary of the
Stonewall riots. The Gay march went from Washington Place in Greenwich Village uptown on Sixth Avenue to end with a "gay-in" in Sheep's Meadow. ==See also==