Planning the demonstration
The March on the Pentagon took place on Saturday 21 October 1967, with events continuing into the early hours of Sunday. It was organised by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, usually called “the Mobe”, under the leadership of the pacifist David Dellinger, with Jerry Rubin as a project director. The organisers drew together pacifists, church groups, students, veteran activists and members of the New Left, and the plan had two parts: a large rally in Washington followed by a march to the Pentagon, where some participants intended to take part in an act of civil disobedience.
The coalition was broad but uneasy. Some organisers wanted a lawful, orderly protest that would appeal to mainstream opinion. Others, influenced by the shift from “protest” to “resistance” that was becoming common in the movement, wanted to disrupt the war machine itself. The Johnson administration expected trouble, and it made arrangements for federal marshals, military police and troops, including paratroopers, to guard the building.
The rally and the march
Crowds gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on the Saturday afternoon. Estimates of numbers vary considerably, with the figures usually quoted for the rally running from tens of thousands up to about 100,000 depending on who counted; a smaller number, perhaps around 30,000 or more according to many accounts, then crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge toward the Pentagon. Speakers, singers and public figures addressed the rally. Many marchers were young, but there were also clergy, parents, teachers and older pacifists, and some veterans.
At the Pentagon the crowd reached the large parking areas and the grassy slopes around the building. Soldiers stood in lines in front of the entrances. Some demonstrators pushed through police lines and reached the steps of the building, and the first arrests were made during the afternoon. Others took part in a symbolic action proposed by the activist Abbie Hoffman and the poet and musician Ed Sanders, who spoke of an “exorcism” of the Pentagon and said that the building would be made to rise into the air. It did not, and many participants treated the proposal as theatre, a sign of the humorous and countercultural style that was entering American protest alongside more traditional pacifism.
The confrontation with the troops
The best-known image of the day was a photograph by Bernie Boston, later titled “Flower Power”, in which a young man puts flowers into the barrels of soldiers’ rifles. It was widely reproduced and came to stand for a hopeful reading of the event. The reality was more varied. Some demonstrators taunted the soldiers, some tried to talk to them, and some tried to cross the lines. At times, protesters were struck by marshals and troops, and there were later accounts of beatings, particularly during the hours after dark.
Many people left on Saturday night, but several thousand remained. In the cold small hours of Sunday, after the permit to demonstrate had expired, the remaining protesters were pushed back and arrested in groups, often after sitting in front of the troops. Reports commonly give the total number arrested over the weekend as around 680 to 700. Most were charged with offences such as trespass or disorderly conduct, and many were released with small penalties, though some received jail sentences. The administration said that it had acted with restraint, while the organisers and many reporters said that the use of force had been excessive in some cases.
Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was reportedly in the building during the events and is said to have watched from a window. He was already privately doubting the course of the war, and his departure from the department was announced only weeks after the march.
Norman Mailer’s account
One of the participants was the novelist Norman Mailer, who joined the march alongside the poet Robert Lowell and the critic Dwight Macdonald, among others. Mailer crossed the lines and was arrested on the Saturday evening, spending a night in custody. He turned his experience into a book, The Armies of the Night, published in 1968, subtitled “History as a Novel, the Novel as History”. The first part is a personal narrative in which Mailer describes himself in the third person, and the second part is a more conventional reconstruction of the march as a whole. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it is often treated as a landmark among the New Journalism writers who borrowed the techniques of the novel for reporting.
Because Mailer is open about his own vanity and confusion, the book gives a more candid and often funnier picture than official accounts, but it should be read as one witness’s version, not a neutral record.
What it changed
The march did not alter government policy, and Johnson continued the war. Its significance lay elsewhere. It demonstrated that opposition could mobilise large numbers in the capital, and it showed that the movement was dividing: those who thought that the event proved the power of mass protest, and those who concluded that peaceful marches were not enough. For commentators in the press, the confrontation between long-haired demonstrators and young soldiers, many of them also draftees, was a vivid picture of generational conflict. It also followed other protests that month, including actions against the draft in Oakland. The march was one peak in a year of antiwar protests across the country, and the organisers’ outlook was shaped by New Left politics as much as by older pacifism.