Nuestro Pueblo

Crowd Battles LAPD as War Protest Turns Violent

June 23, 1967: Antiwar protesters march toward the Century Plaza Hotel COLUMN ONE The Bloody March That Shook L.A. * A 1967 clash between antiwar protesters and police injured dozens, irrevocably changing the city and its politics. The panicked confrontation foreshadowed a coming national upheaval. June 23, 1997 By KENNETH REICH, TIMES STAFF WRITER The war at home over Vietnam had yet to explode in mid-1967. Five hundred American soldiers were dying every month, yet 40% of Americans still supported sending more men. So 30 years ago tonight, when a coalition of 80 antiwar groups staged a march to the Century Plaza Hotel where President Lyndon B. Johnson was being honored, Los Angeles Police Department field commander John A. McAllister expected 1,000 or 2,000 protesters. "When the mass of humanity came up Avenue of the Stars and over the hill, I was astounded," he recalled. "Where did all those people come from? I asked myself." Ten thousand marchers, by most estimates, were assembling across the street from the Century City hotel. Hundreds of nightstick-wielding police--using a parade permit and court order that restricted the marchers from stopping to demonstrate--forceably dispersed them. The bloody, panicked clash that ensued left an indelible mark on politics, protests and police relations. It marked a turning point for Los Angeles, a city not known for drawing demonstrators to marches in sizable numbers. The significance of the evening lay not simply in the 51 people who were arrested and the scores injured when 500 of the 1,300 police on the scene pushed the demonstrators into, and then beyond, a vacant lot that is now the site of the ABC Entertainment Center. Far more powerfully, the Century Plaza confrontation foreshadowed the explosive growth of the national antiwar movement and its inevitable confrontations with police. It shaped the movement's rising militancy, particularly among the sizable number of middle-class protesters who expected to do nothing more than chant against Johnson outside the $1,000-a-plate Democratic Party fund-raising dinner and were outraged by the LAPD's hard-line tactics. Johnson rarely campaigned in public again, except for appearances at safe places like military bases. Within nine months, opposition to the war grew so strong that he shelved his reelection campaign. White liberals in Los Angeles, meanwhile, began to complain about excessive force by the LAPD, a subject traditionally raised only by black and Latino residents. By the next summer, when Chicago police beat demonstrators in the street outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the country was at war with itself. In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the earliest battlegrounds.  "The importance of this demonstration cannot be underestimated, in terms of its relevance to the LAPD, to the magnitude and effectiveness of the antiwar movement and to what kind of public appearances President Johnson would risk in the future," said McAllister, now retired at 73. Coming less than two years after the Watts riots, the Century Plaza incident provoked another important test of Los Angeles police-community relations that would reverberate for decades. One of the most contested LAPD policies--spying on leftist civilian groups--was at the root of the department's conduct on the night of the march. Then-LAPD Chief Tom Reddin says the department indirectly worked with four private security agents who infiltrated the march-planning group. The agents were hired by a security company that was retained by the Century Plaza Hotel. One of the march's top organizers says that one of those spies was an agent provocateur, constantly suggesting such acts as breaking into the hotel and accosting Johnson. The demonstration's co-leaders, Irving Sarnoff and Donald Kalish, have come to disagree over why the march broke down. Kalish says Sarnoff and others radicalized the march without his knowledge. Sarnoff, who chaired the Peace Action Council that sponsored the march, says Kalish behaved "indiscreetly" in allowing one of the undercover infiltrators, whom he first met only five days before the march, to listen to idle boasting and confidential conversations. Reddin says the intelligence reports convinced police that the antiwar march would lead to civil disobedience, requiring a sterner presence. He acknowledges that the marchers got "thumped" when police moved against them. "I don't deny the use of force," said Reddin, who is now 80. "Force was used. Was there provable brutality? No." When a reporter quoted to Reddin a male demonstrator's recollection that the Century Plaza confrontation marked the first time he had ever seen white women beaten by police, Reddin agreed that had happened. A Plan Gone Awry The original idea was to stage a march from Rancho Park, up Pico Boulevard and past the hotel on Avenue of the Stars, then turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard and go home. But as the marchers reached the hotel, a vanguard of radicals ignored the terms of the police permit and sat down in the street. The march halted. Police said they issued a dispersal order several times on a powerful loudspeaker, but many demonstrators said that in all the noise and chants they failed to hear it. Then hundreds of officers moved in, their nightsticks held in front of them, pushing the demonstrators away. Some of the people fought back. Some photographs show police swinging their nightsticks at marchers who were not resisting. A particularly bitter clash took place under the Olympic Boulevard bridge. The unprecedented nature of the event created bitter disputes about whom to blame. The Times published a largely pro-police account the next morning that set off sharp protests by several reporters. The paper's then-metropolitan editor, Bill Thomas, ordered a veteran reporter, the late Jerry Cohen, to reexamine the issue. But nine days later, Cohen's account reached no definite conclusions; the headline could only ask: ". . . What DID Happen?" Shirley Magidson of Beverly Hills, who demonstrated with her husband and children that night, recalls that some of the marchers--many of them middle-class liberals--were angry not only at the police, but at the organizers, who they believed had deliberately led them into a violent confrontation without warning.  "I remember specifically one doctor in Beverly Hills, who was really a proper guy, this dignified gentleman running across the field, very startled at what happened," she said. Sarnoff, now 67 and involved in Friends of the United Nations, remains thrilled by the march. "People need desperately to know that there are many non-electoral forms of struggle that can succeed," he said. "At a time when there is such widespread disillusion with elected leadership, we desperately need to . . . understand that acting collectively outside electoral politics is not only acceptable, but has been the method through which most of our political and economic gains have been made." Kalish, a 77-year-old UCLA philosophy professor, now acknowledges that radicals did alter the original demonstration plan. Kalish believes that provoked the police. Sarnoff, by contrast, continues to maintain that nothing happened to reasonably provoke the police decision to disperse the crowd. Opposing Recollections Police to this day say the decision of perhaps 100 demonstrators to sit down on Avenue of the Stars forced their hand. With hostility in the crowd rising and a bulge in the marchers' ranks forming opposite the hotel, police say they thought that the demonstrators were becoming a mob and might storm the hotel. "This should be remembered as one of the most significant moments in the history of the LAPD," said McAllister. "If we failed to control the crowd and the president was forced to flee the city, we would no more have lived it down than Dallas did the assassination of Kennedy." Sarnoff insists that "had the police not interfered, the march soon would have resumed. Others would have sat, but nothing else would have happened. "But all of a sudden, the police ordered us to disperse, and there was nowhere to move. Construction barricades impeded the way into the field. The police should have known that there was no way to disperse. There was pandemonium. At that point, some people did throw things at the police. Everyone went nuts--the people and the police. The police thought they were in danger, and the crowd was under assault." Reddin, who is writing a book on his life in the LAPD that includes a chapter on the Century Plaza march, pointedly cites the radical credentials of, among others, Sarnoff, who he notes "had been labeled a Communist by the House Committee on Un-American Activities." That charge came in 1958 when Sarnoff appeared before the committee and refused to answer questions about whether he was a Communist. In an interview this month, Sarnoff said he once was a Communist, but he left the party in 1951 at the age of 21. He became, he declared, with perhaps some understatement, someone "a little to the left of center." To Reddin, only about 600 or so marchers were radicals; most of the rest were middle-class liberals caught up in the melee, he said. Demonstrator Magidson said the liberal participants were not aware of some of the radicals who had joined the Peace Action Council. In retrospect, perhaps it should not have been surprising that violence broke out, she said. "I think police expect to act when they're called out in riot gear." Reddin continues to maintain that there was ample reason to believe that major trouble was planned that night, including a possible storming of the hotel. Police came to this conclusion through intelligence provided by a private firm, International Investigations System, which was hired by the hotel and employed four undercover agents who worked closely with the LAPD. "One young woman succeeded in working her way into a position of secretary of Dorothy Healey, the chairperson of the Communist Party in Southern California," Reddin writes in his book chapter on the march. "Two young men got jobs as student workers which put them in close contact with members of the Students for a Democratic Society, one of the most militant groups involved in the event. "The last, another young woman, managed to infiltrate the Peace Action Council by developing a close working relationship with Donald Kalish . . . vice chairman of the PAC." That agent, Sharon Stewart, 27 at the time of the march, could not be found this month. But it is obvious she was an important link in police assessments of the demonstrators' intentions. When the hotel went to court the day before the demonstration to obtain a court order restricting the march, it submitted an affidavit in which Stewart quoted Kalish and others as planning for disruptive "civil disobedience," despite their public assurances all would be peaceful. Kalish, in a declaration made in court 12 days after the march, denied most of Stewart's assertions. Both he and Sarnoff insisted that Stewart tried to provoke march organizers into tactics that could have led to violence. According to all participants, Stewart told Kalish that she had one brother who had been killed fighting in Vietnam, and another, then 16, who wanted to go over to avenge the death. Her mission, she said, was to tell Johnson to end the war before her younger brother went. The former owner of International Investigations Systems, David Berger, now says he and Stewart concocted that story. A Look Back at Decisions Sarnoff says he worked assiduously to keep the march peaceful, but noted that he was dealing with scores of anti-war groups ranging from churches to Communists to those even further to the left. For example, in papers he provided The Times, there is a letter from the then-chairman of the San Diego Coordinating Council for Social Action, Francis Halperin, suggesting well in advance of the march that one of its objectives should be to impede access to the Century Plaza so that Johnson would stay "in the White House with the shades pulled until January 1969"--in other words, until after the election. After the event, Sarnoff and other march organizers were quick to claim that one accomplishment was to scare Johnson away from public campaigning. "It bothered the hell out of him to see the students chanting, 'Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' " Johnson's press secretary, George Reedy, said this month. Ed Davis, who would succeed Reddin as LAPD chief two years after the march, was deputy chief that night and was shocked by the department's conduct. Even today, the officer who was in charge of tactical planning for the demonstration--another chief-to-be named Daryl Gates--remembers the vehemence of Davis' protest. "I was in San Diego that night at an American Legion convention," said Davis, now in retirement in Morro Bay. "When I saw television on the thing, and I saw police officers beating people over the head with nightsticks, I went into the chief's office the following Monday, and I said, 'By what legal right did they have to do that?' "Chief Reddin was there, but it was his aide, Eddie Walker, who said, 'By virtue of the dispersal order' [that police had formally read to demonstrators when the march halted]. I got out the dispersal order, and it said you could arrest, not punish the demonstrators, and I voiced my very strong disapproval. "I'm sure the chief thought he had done a wonderful job, and Eddie Walker thought I was a Communist. But when [future President Richard] Nixon came out later and there was a Century Plaza demonstration when I was chief, we handled it differently, and I'm challenging they had no legal authority to use their clubs and beat people with them." Reddin said he could not recall such a conversation with Davis. Even now, some of the old side controversies seem fresh. For example, in an initial interview for this story, Reddin said he believed that Judge Philip Newman, who dismissed the first criminal charge against a Century Plaza demonstrator, might have been a demonstrator himself. Newman, now retired at 80, denied it. He noted that his Cheviot Hills home lies across from Rancho Park, where Muhammad Ali, H. Rap Brown and Benjamin Spock had addressed the crowd before the march began. The judge said he had gone walking with his dog that night and had encountered police he knew from the Westside station at the park, but had not participated in the march itself. His son and daughter did, he said. After he had dismissed the initial prosecution of a demonstrator, Newman learned from two news reporters that Reddin was suggesting he had been a marcher. The judge said he went over to Reddin's office with the then-presiding judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, Charles Woodmansee, and warned the chief that he would sue if Reddin made the allegation publicly. That, Reddin acknowledged in a subsequent interview for this story, was probably why he left the matter out of his book chapter on Century City.

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Man Killed for Speaking Spanish

May 31, 1986

Berkeley Protest March; Mickey Mantle -- Sportscaster

"We Are Interrupting This Program for a Special Announcement!"

Above, police and National Guard troops keep watch on a march on People's Park in Berkeley. View this page Times reporter Charles T. Powers files a sidebar on fears that the march would turn violent. Instead, there was a "happy coalition of flower children, radicals and liberals," he says. View this page What's hot at Akron: Rattan!

Above, an article on Memorial Day by Linda Mathews. A blind date for Tricia Nixon.  Los Angeles T-Birds vs. the New York Bombers in roller derby at the Olympic!

Readers' letters on the protests in Berkeley... ... and the San Diego to Santa Monica bikini race.

The 1960s: Hitchhiking and marijuana.

The cast of characters who put on blazers, hold microphones and call themselves broadcasters seems to grow every year because players keep retiring. I guess there are ex-athletes who eventually make good announcers--Don Drysdale in baseball and Troy Aikman in football come to mind--but I've never understood the reason for hiring former players to state the obvious when there are sportscasters able to describe the action, tell a story and do so in complete, clear sentences. Mickey Mantle was one of those guys who stepped in front of a camera after he retired. He joined former Yankee teammate Tony Kubek and Curt Gowdy on NBC's "Game of the Week", which used to be appointment viewing for baseball fans every Saturday. Other than a rare Dodger or Angel road game, this was the only baseball shown on television that week and usually a chance to see a ballpark I could only dream of attending. NBC also employed another former star turned broadcaster, Sandy Koufax. Don Page talked to Mantle about his adjustment: "I think it might turn into something but right now it's a test for both of us [NBC and Mickey]. I'll tell you one thing though--it's easier than trying to hit a ball." See what I mean? NBC had Mantle and Kubek talking to players on the pregame show "in an easy, locker room style" and Page said Mantle was "surprisingly good at it." Page really let broadcasters have it regularly in his columns but he let Mantle off easy. Page's story started with a memory of watching a young Mantle playing with the Yankees in an exhibition at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field. My guess is the critic was a fan no matter what Mantle was doing. --Keith Thursby

Youth Drowns in Muddy Pond

View Larger Map Avenue 50 and Monte Vista, via Google maps.

Society Woman Saves Black Man From Lynch Mob

May 31, 1909: Margaret Sylvester, an Augusta socialite, saves African American Joe Bryant from a mob. She had him come into her house and said she would shoot anyone who followed him.

Found on EBay -- Yorty for President!

Two Yorty for President campaign buttons have been listed on EBay. According to a March 16, 1971, story, attorney John Sheffield passed out the buttons as part of a draft-Yorty campaign. Yorty was endorsed by William Loeb, the controversial, conservative publisher of the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader. The Buy It Now price is $4.50.

Matt Weinstock, May 30, 1959

Day at the Races After a long hiatus, Snake, this corner's caddy correspondent, has reported in again, this time with a racetrack adventure. He and some other Bel-Air caddies who'd made a few good loops (carrying golf bags around the course) decided one day recently to try their luck at Hollywood Park. They pooled their loot and agreed to bet on certain jockeys. "We are not poor losers," Snake said, "but by the sixth race we were down to almost empty saddles." Not only that, people swiped their seats when they went down to the windows to place their bets. They were sitting high in the grandstand as the horses paraded for the seventh race. Their money was on a jockey who is a familiar figure in golf and a nice guy. As he went by one of the caddies yelled, "Hey, don'tthreeputt this one!" But he blew it and the next race, on which the caddies' last dimes were riding. After the race, the same caddy walked up to what Snake calls the "almost barrier" and said softly to the jockey, "Just what really is your line?" :: ON THURSDAY Mrs. Jean McKeen, who lives on a 40-foot sloop anchored at Balboa, got the signals that motherhood was imminent. Her husband, a yacht rigger, was working on a boat somewhere in the harbor and could not be reached, so she phoned her mother, Mrs. MaxRinehart, in L.A. Her mother rushed there to help and as they started ashore Jean stopped and said she better leave a note for her husband. And with the refreshing casualness with which young people now contemplate such matters she wrote simply, "Having baby," and dashed off to the hospital. :: REMINISCENCE I used to watch the "give" shows, Now I watch and play -- It seems the wheels who ran them Gave themselves away. -- JULIAN BROWN :: WE'VE HAD hoses that burrow into the ground, men who claim to have ridden on flying saucers and all sorts of miracles and phenomena. This week there was a new mystery. Mrs. Virginia Lily, 6102 Delphi St., Highland Park, phoned the paper and asked, "Have you heard of a plane losing something while flying over Los Angeles?" Told there was no such report, she said, "Well there's a lot of butter on my roof." Closer inspection revealed it was really oleomargarine, six quarter pounds of it. They had struck her roof and driveway and a neighbor's roof with tremendous force and splattered. Mischievous youngsters might have been responsible, she conceded, but the blobs were in a line, indicating they had landed from a great height. "It's kind of silly," she said, "having to clean up after airplanes." :: EVERYONE IS making cracks about the Yanks, but Eric Sevareid said it best on his CBS radio broadcast. An excerpt: "For years we've been preaching the cause of the small against the big, the weak against the fast and the old against the new. And behold, it is beginning to happen. The New York Yankees are in eighth position in the American League. It is a warning wink in the Almighty's eye, putting the world on notice that those who live by power must die by power. The meek shall inherit the earth and it's about time." :: FOOTNOTES -- There's one in every crowd. During a discussion of "The World, the Flesh and the Devil," in which only three persons are left after an atomic war, BillGraydon asked. "Is that the one where Harry Belafonte get the ticket for jaywalkings ?" ... Attention all paupers: A Mercedes-Benz ad offers "the world's most honored car at prices pauper or prince can afford. From $3,500 to $13,000" ... Monty Ryan knows a ladymalaproper who says if she didn't go to gym class every week her muscles would get "flappy " ... This is one of the weekends the safety council people worry about, and the traffic toll figures Sunday night will tell why. Me, I'm staying home on some long postponed reading.

Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, May 30, 1959

Isn't it amazing how much Pogo looks like Calvin of "Calvin and Hobbes?"   Confidential File Mash Notes and Comments (Press Release) "Washington, D.C. -- According to Congressman Craig Hosmer, sponsor of the Interior Department's 10-year, $10 million research program aimed at practical conversion of salt water to fresh water, it takes 660,000 gallons of water to make a ton of synthetic rubber, 200,000 gallons to grow a ton of alfalfa, and seven gallons to flush a toilet..." (signed) Rep. Craig Hosmer, 530 House Office Building, Washington D.C. -- So that's what you were doing in there all that time. Charlie Halleck was beginning to worry about you. :: "Dear Ms. Coates -- "The other day I was witness to a very deploring incident. "A driver ran a red light and was immediately stopped by an officer. The driver put up such a big fuss and even cussed the policeman. He knew he was wrong, but still he insisted he was right. "Later, when I got home, I was inspired to write the following: When a policeman stops you on the street, Because of a signal you didn't beat, Don't blow your top or alibi. He saw you do it, so don't lie! Instead, give him your co-operation Because you're guilty of a violation: And the ticket that he hands you then Is to tell you, "Don't do it again." The officer is not your foe -- That is something you should know. He is there for your protection. And for accident prevention. So, if a policeman you happen to meet While you're walking down the street, Don't turn your head the other way; You might have need of him some day. "I read your column every day and enjoy it very much. You and Dear Abbey make my evening complete." (signed) Arthur M., Los Angeles. --You and your poems make me sick. :: (Press Release) "NEW YORK, N.Y., -- Lithe and lovely Audrey Hepburn has gone 'animal' for the June issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. "In a photo series of animal-imitative exercises for relaxation and muscular tone, Audrey displays a hitherto unrevealed facet of her multi-sided talents by portraying as beautiful a menagerie as will be seen anywhere in the world.  " 'Actually,' explains Audrey in Cosmopolitan, 'animals never have bad posture, nor are they ever clumsy. I've tried to incorporate what I've seen in animals so that the human body can benefit.' "For purposes of demonstrating the beauty and fluidity of animal movements and control, the elfin beauty has donned a flaming red leotard, and in the natural grass lawns of the 'Green Mansions' set, she runs a gamut of exercises inspired by the fawn, the monkey, the sloth as well as the crane, the lynx and many others from the animal kingdom. "For those who have never actually seen a beautiful monkey, the color-filled, Audrey-dominated pages of June Cosmopolitan are highly recommended." (signed) Heart Magazines, 250 W. 55th St., New York City. --Yes. But what do you recommend for those of us who have?

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Health

May 30, 1984