Protestors at the Pentagon
On October 21, 1967 at least 35,000 anti-war protesters organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam gathered for a demonstration at the Defense Department (the “March on the Pentagon”), where they were confronted by some 2,500 armed soldiers. During the protest, a famous picture was taken, where George Harris placed carnations into the soldiers’ gun barrels. The march concluded with an attempt to “exorcise” the building.
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam sponsored the Saturday march to protest the Vietnam War. Around 50,000 railed at the Lincoln Memorial in the morning for speeches and songs, although not all continued across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Pentagon. Organizers claimed 100,000 or more marches, but two intelligence agencies and an analysis of aerial reconnaissance photographs from a Navy Skywarrior plane estimated 35,000.
The Pentagon became a spot for many protests against the Vietnam War during the late 1960s. A group of 2,500 women, organized by Women Strike for Peace, demonstrated outside of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s office at the Pentagon on February 15, 1967. In May 1967, a group of 20 demonstrators held a sit-in outside the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s office, which lasted four days before they were arrested.
