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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Century City Anti War Protest

The Century City Plaza Hotel was home to a major anti-war protest held on June 23,1967. Like much of the resistance at the time, the protest was depicted by the media in a biased way–praising the police and dehumanizing the protestors. The protest took place outside of the hotel while President Lyndon B Johnson hosted a fundraiser and was set to deliver a speech that would give him a political boost with anti-war Democrats. Outside the hotel a crowd of 80 antiwar groups gathered totaling about 10,000 protestors who received a parade permit allowing them to march past the hotel and onto Santa Monica Boulevard. However when protestors got to the front of the hotel, many of them stopped and sat down, halting the march. The police ordered the protestors to disperse or they would be arrested. When they didn't, a violent confrontation erupted.

The police forcibly dispersed the crowd attempting to push them back and using their nightsticks when met with resistance. The justification for the “dispersal” was that President Johnson would have been in danger if the protestors rushed into the hotel. The idea that the protestors failed to disperse is also not as simple as the media portrayed. The officers had largely narrowed the line of march just past the hotel which caused a back up and a lack of space for the protestors to move. The protest had also attracted spectators who clogged up the sidewalk and path of the protestors .

The police attacked demonstrators for more than an hour after the dispersal order. Reports from witnesses and participants describe how they saw cops hit a young woman with a baby in her arms, knocking her to the ground and kicking her while she was on her back. Attorney Sherwin Shayne who was present that day recalls an officer knocking two boys down; which subsequently caused Shayne to fall, as he fell an officer clubbed the left side of his head and in his abdomen. The officer then took Shayne to three different locations and booked him at each. Some officers even chased demonstrators further than a mile from the protest site.

What began as a peaceful protest in Century City became a bloody and aggressive confrontation by LAPD leaving many people injured, traumatized, and 51 arrested. Following the Century City protest Lyndon B. Johnson did not campaign in public aside from military bases. The event also marked a turning point in Los Angeles as well, as white liberals had now experienced the police brutality that the Black population of LA had been plagued with for decades.

Sources:

Davis Mike and Jon Wiener. Set the Night on Fire : L.A. in the Sixties. Verso 2020.

Masters, Nathan. “3 Protests from L.A. History That Got the Public’s Attention.” PBS SoCal, 21 June 2022, www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/3-protests-from-l-a-history-that-got-the-publics-attention.

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Protestors fill Motor Ave. as they start marching toward Century Plaza Hotel for an anti-Vietnam War protest. Ten thousand protesters turned out during speech by President Lyndon Johnson.(Ray Graham / Los Angeles Times) . 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 — forcibly 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 fundraising 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. …
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 fundraising 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. …
"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 — forcibly 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."
In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the earliest battlegrounds. 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. …June 23, 1967: A protester is removed from Century Plaza during a speech by President Lyndon Johnson.(Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA)
"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 — forcibly 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 fundraising 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."