The March on the Pentagon on Oct. 21, 1967, became a cultural touchstone of the decade, a defining moment of American history limned in the leonine prose of Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Armies of the Night." For the first time, the counterculture openly confronted the Establishment at the seat of American power. By now, 13,000 Americans had died in Vietnam and "flower power" had been loosed throughout the land from the streets of San Francisco. The draft had become a bone of contention between the generations, turning war protest into a mass effort known simply as the Movement.
The Pentagon march was the culmination of five days of nationwide anti-draft protests organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam -- "the Mobe." But a singular spark was provided by the Youth International Party (Yippies), a fringe group whose leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, had announced that they planned an "exorcism" of the Pentagon. They would encircle the building, chant incantations, "levitate" the structure and drive out the evil war spirits.
The crowd drawn to Washington for the March on the Pentagon and a rally at the Lincoln Memorial numbered more than 100,000. For the first time, there were significant numbers of hippies, with long hair and fanciful garb. Hoffman donned beads and an Uncle Sam hat. Speakers included Mailer, poet Robert Lowell and pediatrician Benjamin Spock. Protest signs now brimmed with counterculture wit: "LBJ, Pull Out Now, Like Your Father Should Have Done."
Mailer and Hoffman were among the 681 arrested, most for disorderly conduct and breaking police lines. More than 2,500 Army troops protected the Pentagon, which did not levitate (although Hoffman claimed to have urinated on it). Hippies pressed forward to place flowers in the barrels of soldiers' bayoneted M-14 rifles. "Will you take my flower?" a dancing girl asked the soldiers. "Please do take my flower. Are you afraid of flowers?"
The Pentagon's steps were spattered with blood. Tear gas was unleashed on the crowds. "People became frightened," recalled Raskin, one of the speakers that day. "They began running every which way. At that moment, it turned into something else. A sense of chaos takes over."