Human Be-In - Simple English Wikipedia

# Human Be-In

### From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

The 'Human Be-In' was a happening in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It led the way to the Summer of Love, that made the Haight-Ashbury area famous as the center of an American counterculture, and introduced the word 'psychedelic' to everyday Americans.

The hippie movement had grown partly because of college students who were not happy about the way the country was headed -- from the way African Americans were being treated in the south, to the way young men were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War -- and partly from the 'Beat Generation' poets and jazz hipsters.

Throughout the early 1960s, college students who were against the policies of segregation in Southern United States would travel to the south to take part in sit-ins, register African Americans to vote, demonstrate, march, and similar activism. The recent November 1966 elections to Congress were a setback for the Democrats, with more and more people unhappy about the war and the riots, and the Republicans finally succeeded in getting the first African American Senator elected since the Reconstruction. During this time, San Francisco was becoming a center for younger people who also liked to experiment with drugs, and it was also a center for the music scene. From the idea of the 'sit-in', they got the idea to have a 'Human Be-In' in early January to get people's minds off politics and the war.

The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the first issue of the San Francisco Oracle as "A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In." Speakers at the rally included Timothy Leary in his first San Francisco appearance, who set the tone that afternoon with his famous phrase "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" and Richard Alpert (soon to be more widely known as 'Ram Dass'), and poets like Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras, and Gary Snyder. Other counterculture gurus included counterculture comedian Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Jerry Rubin. The Hells Angels, at the peak of their 'outlaw' reputation, looked after lost children. A host of local rock bands such as Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, who had played at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom since February 1966, provided the music, and Owsley "Bear" Stanley provided massive amounts of his "White Lightning" LSD to the gathered masses.

The national media did not know what to say. No one was able to agree whether 20,000 or 30,000 people showed up. Soon every gathering was being called an '-In' of some kind: Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In comedy television show began to be shown over NBC just a year later, January 22, 1968.

Over the year 1967 more and more young people from around the country began flocking to San Francisco, until by the Summer there were between 100,000 to 200,000 there taking part in the "Summer of Love".

## [edit] External links

- Neville Powis, 'The Human Be-In and the hippy revolution."
- Capsule description.
- Allen Cohen's website, with history from an insider.
- Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s 'Rockument' commentary and sound bites.

Retrieved from "http://simple.wikipedia.org../../../h/u/m/Human_Be-In_d6f7.html"

Categories: History of the United States | Culture | Human issues | 1967

##### Views

- Article
- Talk
- Newest version

##### Search

##### In other languages

- Nederlands
- Deutsch
- English