In January 1967, a
counter-culture event brought the focus of world media to a small,
run-down, area of San Francisco called Haight Ashbury.
Following on the heels of the Beat Generation of the 1950's, a new
social group was starting to flower. Early on they were called
hipsters and beatniks until they became known as
‘hippies'.
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The Haight, as it's called, was a low-rent area first populated by students. It was soon nicknamed ‘hashbury' since just about every hippy was ‘a head', as pot smokers were called.
By 1965 it was fast becoming the hippy centre. Artists, musicians, writers, poets, painters and fun-loving hippies were drawn there from all over America.
Lifestyles and morality were changing. Communes and communal living were contradicting the taboos of an earlier generation which believed in sex after marriage.
Allen Cohen
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Allen Cohen and fellow artist Michael Bowen organised an event that would lead to the famous Human Be-In a few months later. It was called the Love Pageant Rally and 3,000 people attended.
It was organised in response to a new law in California banning the use of the psychedelic drug, LSD. The new law would come into effect on October 6th 1966, and this date was interpreted by Allen Cohen, Michael Bowen and others as the symbol ‘666' representing the Beast as found in Revelation in the Bible. They also saw the growing confrontations between hippy communes and the police. Busts were being made for marijuana. This led too street protests and rioting. It was becoming clear that a new form of protest was needed.
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A celebration of innocence
"Instead of protesting the moratorium of LSD," said Cohen, "instead of protesting the law that was going into effect, our idea was to make a demonstration which would show the law's falsity. Without confrontation, we wanted to create a celebration of innocence. We were not guilty of using illegal substances. We were celebrating transcendental consciousness. The beauty of the universe. The beauty of being."
3,000 people gathered in Panhandle Park for the Love Pageant Rally. Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead played from the back of
a flatbed truck.
Ex-Harvard professor Richard Alpert, who later became spiritual guide Baba Ram Das, met up with Allen Cohen and Michael Bowen at the rally. Cohen asked Alpert what he thought of the day.
"Well," said Alpert, "it's a hell of a gathering.
It's just being. Humans being. Being together.""Yeah," said Bowen, "It's a Human Be-In."
Then it was decided to organise something called the Human Be-In. The idea was to bring tens of thousands of people together, which is why it was also called ‘A Gathering of the Tribes'.
The huge open-air hippy gathering took place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, January 14th 1967. More than 20,000 people turned up.
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Allen Cohen characterised the event as a meeting-of-the-minds. It brought together philosophically opposed factions. On the one side was the late 1966 San Francisco-based counter culture - the Berkeley radicals - who were tending toward increased militancy in response to the American government's Vietnam war policies. On the other side were the Haight-Ashbury hippies, who, with the help of psychoactive compounds and various spiritual guides, saw the cosmic humour in it all, and urged peaceful protest and ongoing joyful celebration.
The Be-In focused the key issues of the 1960s counter-culture: personal power, decentralization, ecological awareness, consciousness expansion.
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Tags: be-in, hippies, summer of love