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March 26: Central Park Be-In

lawrencebush
March 26, 2012

Some ten thousand people attended the first Central Park Be-In on Sheep Meadow on this date, Easter Sunday, in 1967, responding to a call by Paul Williams of Crawdaddy magazine, among others, and a widely distributed poster and hand-out by psychedelic artist Peter Max (Finkelstein). “The password,” wrote Don McNeill in the Village Voice, “was ‘LOVE’ and it was sung, chanted, painted across foreheads, and spelled out on costumes. . . . Although hippies dominated the Be-In, it was by no means exclusively a psychedelic event. Many families came to join the Be-In after the Easter Parade down Fifth Avenue. Be-In posters in Spanish invited members of the Puerto Rican community. Grandmothers and executives, hippies and housewives mingled together in harmony. Three nuns appeared wearing Be-In buttons.” Another Be-In, focused on protesting the war in Vietnam, was scheduled for April 15th.

“The Police and Parks Departments quietly and unofficially cooperated with the Be-In. A police car arrived at 6.45 in the morning, and the few hundred people already gathered rushed the car and pelted it with flowers, yelling ‘Daffodil Power.’ The police, astonished and covered with flowers, beat a hasty retreat.” —Don McNeill