It was a brisk autumn afternoon in Boston on October 15th, 1969 and the crowds kept coming to protest the Vietnam War. Word spread fast that it was to be a major demonstration and that several local folksingers and bands would show up. By the time mid-afternoon rolled around a cool breeze and a darkening gray sky threatened the 150,000 people that had come to call for the withdrawal of American soldiers, sailors and marines from Southeast Asia.
The crowd was restive and angry, and I decided to start photographing the demonstration just as Bonnie Raitt, who was attending college in Cambridge, began to play her large guitar and sing out about freedom. I happened to point the camera at a little girl holding a large sign saying "war is not healthy for c and other living things" and she raised her two fingers at the moment I pressed the shutter.
I took many more pictures that day, but the little girl giving me the "victory" sign has stuck in my mind for almost 42 years. I think she was about six years old, which would make her almost fifty now. I wonder if she remembers being there, and the kind of person she grew into.
Later toward dusk, the crowd got ugly, and groups of demonstrators started assembling in packs to walk to the Cambridge Common breaking windows and trashing cars and property along the way. Part of it was frustration, and part of it was inflammatory speeches - and maybe for some it was just an excuse to get away with something and raise hell. It was an amazing day of contrasts between the little girl with the sign, Bonnie Raitt and the 150,000 other people there was a general feeling of frustration and foreboding.
Looking back now and knowing that the times since then have resulted in a new war that America decides they can win every five or six years brings a profound sadness. Memories of the late Phil Ochs singing "and I ain't marching any more" and Country Joe and The Fish's tuneful lament "one, two, three four what are we fightin' for" brings only frustration, depression and anxiety. Have we learned anything at all in forty years?
