The Uninvited

Organizers had billed it in advance as "the biggest antiwar demonstration in history," predicting that up to 50,000 demonstrators would assemble to jeer the President when he arrived at the Century Plaza Hotel in West Los Angeles. The morning of Johnson's speech before a $500-a-plate President's Club dinner, a three-page ad proclaimed: "As of this date, we 8,000 Democrats of Southern California are disassociating ourselves from you because of your conduct of the war in Viet Nam."

No more than 10,000 Angelenos gathered during the day at Cheviot Hills Recreation Center to hear the thoughts of such speakers as Cassius Clay and Benjamin Spock ("I hate Johnson as much as anyone here").

Near dusk, the demonstrators began the mile-long march to the hotel. Though they had a permit to parade, Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Orlando Rhodes had issued an injunction forbidding them to halt. But the marchers were unable to continue when about 5,000 spectators jammed the street in front of the hotel where John son was elaborating on his summit-based hopes for world peace.

About 1,300 police, one of the largest security forces ever gathered in California, unfortunately turned the scene into ugly chaos. They suddenly began flailing their night sticks wildly at students, women and children, who were unable to move as ordered because other police squads were pushing them from the rear and sides. The mass of marchers unavoidably spilled into the police lines, and when they did, they were beaten again. After half an hour, the demonstrators' monitors started to disperse the moiling crowds and avert what might soon have become a far uglier scene than its pacific entrepreneurs ever envisaged.

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