Home | Site Map | About | Products | Galleries | Guest Galleries | Poster Galleries | 60s Gallery | Contact | 60s Tribe | Links | Tao of the 60's | Search

'Allen Ginsburg & Gary Snyder Giving A Purification Mantra' © Lisa Law

The Human Be-In

By

Neville Powis -22 January 2003-

"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'. The intersection of two streets called ‘Haight' and ‘Ashbury' was at the centre of a run-down Victorian quarter of San Francisco.

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 of San Francisco.

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.

'Haight Ashbury 60s' © Lisa Law

The small, run down, district of San Francisco had transformed into a counter-culture haven. One of its spokesmen was Allen Cohen. He set up a hippy, psychedelic student magazine called the San Francisco Oracle. It was filled with new art and writings by the poets and thinkers of the day.
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.

'Janis with Big Brother-Love Pageant-© Michael Bowen

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. LSD was introduced to America in 1949. In less than a decade it had reached a high standing among psychiatrists as a therapeutic tool in treating severely resistant psychiatric conditions. It was also found to ease the physical and psychological distress of terminal cancer patients. By the sixties the American Food and Drug Administration classified it as an experimental drug and therefore a controlled substance.
The primary problem was communication - between San Francisco officials and the swelling numbers of Hashbury hippies.

"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.

' Grateful Dead at the Human Be-In' © Lisa Law

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.

'Folks Be-Ing' © Gilbert Weingourt	'Folks Around the Stage' © Lisa Law

The Human Be-In Press Release
‘A union of love and activism previously separated by categorical dogma and label mongering will finally occur ecstatically when Berkley political activists and hip community and San Francisco’s spiritual generation and contingents from the emerging revolutionary generation all over California meet for a Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.

Twenty to fifty thousand people are expected to gather for a joyful Pow Wow and Peace Dance to be celebrated with leaders, guides and heroes of our generation: Timothy Leary will make the first Bay area public appearance; Alan Ginsberg will chant and read with Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, and Lenore Kandel; Dick Alpert, Jerry Rubin, and Jack Weinberg will speak.

Music will be played by all the Bay area rock bands, including the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and many others.

Everyone is invited to bring costumes, blankets, bells, flags, symbols, cymbals, drums, beads, feathers, flowers.

Now is the evolving generation of American young the humanization of the American man and woman can begin in joy and embrace without fear, dogma, suspicion or dialectical righteousness. A new concert of human relations being developed within the youthful underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared so that a revolution of form can be filled with a Renaisance of compassion, awareness, and love in the revelation of the unity of all mankind.

The Human Be-In is the joyful, face-to-face beginning of the new epoch.’

If you recognize yourself in any of the Be-In photos please contact us.

'Tim Leary at the Be-In' © Lisa Law

© Gilbert Weingourt	'Humans Be-Ing' © Gilbert Weingourt	© Gilbert Weingourt

Some of the Be-In Players: Grateful Dead Jefferson Airplane Janis Joplin Quicksilver Messenger Timothy Leary Gary Snyder Dick Alpert (Ram Dass) Jerry Rubin Michael McClure Allen Ginsberg Lawrence Ferlinghetti