1967 March on the Pentagon

In the evening of January 14, 1967 various countercultural figures celebrating the Human Be-In converged in artist Michael Bowen’s San Francisco painting studio. Bowen's guests in the room included Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, Ed Sanders, and Jerry Rubin. The small group would eventually conceive of a plan to make a protest march to the Pentagon, Gary Snyder would suggest the need for an exorcism of the Pentagon. Abbie Hoffman, separate from the group, would propose that in order to draw attention to the Pentagon through shock value, which activists saw as the epicenter of military aggression, they should employ the use of psychic energy and physically levitate the building. Michael Bowen would suggest the purpose of the march be to actually levitate the building. The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe) played a major role in organizing the protest. David Dellinger, a prominent pacifist, appointed Jerry Rubin, who led the large Vietnam Day Committee at the University of California, Berkeley, to organize a march, aiming to attract young, educated college students to the cause. ==Protest==

On October 21, 1967, approximately 100,000 people gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., to protest the Vietnam War. The demonstration began with a rally featuring speeches from notable figures such as Dr. Benjamin Spock and performances by countercultural folk singer Phil Ochs. Additional notable attendees included persons such as Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Dwight MacDonald, Noam Chomsky, and Paul Goodman were in attendance. From the Lincoln Memorial, protesters then marched towards the Pentagon. As the protesters neared the Pentagon, they were met by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division who formed a human barricade blocking the Pentagon steps to prevent access to the building. The event was accompanied by Allen Ginsberg leading Tibetan chants to assist Hoffman. Protesters faced down troops with bayonets for hours. The standoff continued into the night and around midnight, troops chased most protesters away. The protest was met with resistance from military police and U.S Marshalls, resulting in a total of forty-seven injuries between the protester, soldiers, and U.S. Marshalls and approximately 682 arrests. == Cultural impact ==

The 1967 March on the Pentagon became emblematic of the countercultural and anti-war movements of the 1960s reflecting a convergence of political protest and countercultural expression. Its significance lies not only in its scale and direct confrontation with a central institution of U.S. military power, but also in the lasting images and narratives generated in American culture. The protest itself inspired a range of artistic, literary, and scholarly responses that helped solidify its place in American cultural memory. Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, a 1968 nonfiction novel recounting his participation in the protest, won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. His narrative framed the event as a symbolic clash between state and authority and a diverse resistance movement grounded in personal conscience and civil disobedience. Media coverage and photography, particularly the widely circulated image of a protester placing a flower into the barrel of a soldier's rifles, further shaped public perception by visually encapsulating the concept of nonviolent resistance. In retrospect, the march is often viewed as both a high point of 1960s activism and a reflection of the deep generational, cultural, and political divides that marked the era. Its legacy is preserved in literary works, photos, and in the continued usage of the Pentagon as a symbolic site of protest. File:Vietnam War protestors at the March on the Pentagon.jpg|Protesters at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. File:Public Reactions, The March on the Pentagon - NARA - 192605.tif|Protesters marching in the street. File:Abraham Lincoln Brigade Vietnam War Protesters.gif|Abraham Lincoln Battalion veterans marching from the Lincoln Memorial. File:A female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA.jpg|A protester hands a trooper a flower. File:Washington D.C. Anti-Vietnam Demonstration. U.S. Marshals bodily remove one of the protesters during the outbreak of... - NARA - 530620.jpg|US Marshals carrying off a protester. File:Washington, D.C. Anti-Vietnam Demonstration. Protesters sit on the wall around their bonfire after spending the night... - NARA - 530619.tif|Protesters around a fire at the Capitol Mall. ==See also==