Flowers and Politics
The term achieved shades of political meaning when San Francisco Bay Area Flower Children gathered in Berkeley, California in April 1969 to participate in the planting of flowers, shrubs, grass, and trees during the building of People's Park. After authorities destroyed People's Park and installed an 8 ft (2.4 m) tall chain-link wire fence around its perimeter, planting flowers became a symbol of peaceful resistance.
In the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon, protesters were quickly surrounded by Federal troops. Actor George Harris put flowers in the barrels of the soldiers' guns. Photographer Bernie Boston snapped a picture which has become a familiar image of the 1960s antiwar movement. Inspired by Harris' idealistic gesture, protesters at Kent State University three years later were still putting flowers in National Guardsmen's guns.
Read more about this topic: Flower Child
Famous quotes containing the words flowers and/or politics:
“Ach, Mutter,
This old, black dress,
I have been embroidering
French flowers on it.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)