A Minnesota PBS Initiative
The Cops Weren't Friendly
This is more of a side glance than anything incisive. The protest was in Century City, California, in the late 1960s. It was a big one. Many famous faces were there, Dr. Spock, Daniel Ellsberg and a prizefighter who was in the process of changing his name to Muhammad Ali. I was doing photographs. Film was burning through my camera.
By the time of Century City, protests everywhere were angry. We know from hindsight that they had a reason to be.
The old days of the elders telling the children how to behave in no uncertain terms had passed for the young folk, but had become entrenched for the police. In the teach-ins, everything was love and peace. People, young and old, were passionate.
But the crowd began to move.
Century City Blvd was wide, so marchers were wide from side to side. Police were on the curb every few yards (!) and motorcycle officers cruised at the edges. They weren't very careful about who was in the way, people were clipped.
I was burning film from inside and out. I was having trouble balancing equipment and rolls of film, so I stepped on the curb. More often, photogs were given a little slack. Officer told me to move. I told him I was just changing film. "I said move!", and he pushed me into the street pretty hard.
Good job I was young and could collect myself before tripping into the motorcycle. It became ugly.
An oddity. Mohammed Ali was standing on the back of a truck autographing draft cards. I was up close to show all those hands, all those draft cards, reaching up. People behind me kept asking me to hand up their cards. I did - at the same time a Life Magazine photographer shot. I was in the next issue as 'an anti-war protester.'
I managed a couple of good shots of Dr, B. Spock. Fast forward to the early 2000s and I was able to give a couple of prints to his grandson, Dan Spock, at the MN Historical Society!
1966-1967 were pivotal years, kairos time. It was the first time that youthful naivete met authoritarian law enforcement. They-can't-do-that met oh-yes-we-can.
An early event involved the teen nightclub Pandora's Box on the Sunset Strip. Crowds had become unruly, so the police went in to straighten them out.
Violence began from the blue side. Kids were pushed around pretty hard, but they kept coming back. The Friday and Saturday night protests became a battle of wills.
Protesting began to be a kind of sport, especially when the truth about Viet Nam came out.
When top names, Dr. Spock, Mohammed Ali, came out, so did the crowds.
By this time, people, both protestors and spectators, had become aware of not police brutality, but the stridency of their response. Irresistible force and immovable object was a kind of context.
In the ensuing years, police forcefulness became brutality. The younger people were the enemy. The unhousled crimes of the Rampart Division trickled out, then became a flow. A flow that still bedevils the LAPD. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
View more photos from Bill's collection.
This story is part of Civil Rights Movement and the War.
View the story collection.
Story Themes: Anti-war Movement, Bill Jolitz, California, Calypso Joe, Cassius Clay, Civilian, Dissent, General Hersheybar, Los Angeles, News Coverage, North Oaks, Photography, Pop Culture, Protest, Race, William Jolitz