March 10, 1968: 56 years ago, March 9 1968, the Peace and Freedom Movement inaugurated the [...]

56 years ago, March 9 1968, the Peace and Freedom Movement inaugurated the “Freedom Festival Week” with a parade of ten thousand people marching from the Peace and Freedom Party HQ at 55 Colton St, weaving through the Haight, out to the Polo Grounds of Golden Gate Park

The march was led by the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s rag-tag Gorilla Band, a 27 member radical musical crew that included flag-bearing majorettes, a chorus, a brass section and a man who hummed through a comb. A goal of the march was to bring collective arts into the streets

After reaching the Polo Grounds, a massive party began featuring speeches from Kathleen Cleaver and several other Peace & Freedom Party representatives, and musical performances by Allmen Joy, Celestial Hysteria, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Santana Blues Band and others

Roughly half way through the event, an unidentified man enraptured by the command to “surrender to love” captured the day’s attention when he desperately pleaded with the crowd to give themselves entirely to one another, stripped off his pants and ran them up the flagpole

The march and concert, and the “spontaneous expressions of freedom” that followed, began the 8-day freedom festival that included several other concerts, film screenings, art exhibits, plays, and additional rallies, intending to make the Haight “a place to do your thing” again