The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York,[3][4] 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted more than 460,000 attendees.
Woodstock - Wikipedia
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Most of those at Woodstock were young. Nearly all of them were white. The few blacks present were perfectly safe. There were no fights. No one was killed.
What would have happened if a large number of young blacks came together for a large rock concert? We donāt need to guess.
In 1975 there was a rock concert at Washington, DC that was called āHuman Kindness Day.ā Most of those present were young blacks.
The Washington Post
1975 Human Kindness Dayās cruel violence
By ā Jenny Pike, Silver SpringSeptember 4, 2011
The crowd was huge, an estimated 125,000 people stretching from the Washington Monument west to 17th Street NW. There were sporadic assaults early in the day, but the real violence didnāt start until after Stevie Wonderās performance.
A 22-year-old man from Vienna was standing near the base of the monument when a group of men grabbed his wallet. He gave chase and was struck in the mouth with a club. An 18-year-old from Annapolis was jumped by a group of 20 teenagers who beat him and threw bottles at him until he was able to run to an ambulance. The worst injury was to Steven Laine, who was stabbed in his right eye while cutting across the Mall on his way home from work at the Agriculture Department.
āI said, āHelp me,ā and there was no response,ā Laine told a Post reporter from his hospital bed.
By the time it was over, there had been about 500 robberies and 600 injuries, and 150 people were treated at hospitals.
Kenneth Donovan was a 26-year-old U.S. Park Police officer who had recently joined the department's mounted unit. Seated atop a black thoroughbred horse named War Courier, he had a good view of Human Kindness Day's descent into chaos.
āPeople were blindly grabbing handbags,ā he remembered in an interview. āIt got to be a thing to grab open a womanās blouse and rip it and run.ā
Park Police considered laying down a tear gas barrage to clear the Washington Monument grounds but decided against it, fearing the rioters would spill into downtown.
Donovan said law enforcement officers spent so much time watching the mayhem as opposed to stopping it because of a deal that had been struck with the eventās organizers: Security was to be provided by 800 armband-wearing volunteer marshals. The police had agreed not to interfere.
A later investigation revealed not only that 800 volunteer marshals would not have been enough but also that a mere 262 had showed up.
āYou canāt really take a large crowd that size and more or less advertise that there is just no police protection,ā Donovan said.
If only it hadn't been called Human Kindness Day. As a reader wrote in to Post columnist Bill Gold: "So much for kindness. I don't want to be around on Human Cruelty Day."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...uel-violence/2011/08/21/gIQAzl7M2J_story.html
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A friend of mine attended Human Kindness Day with his girl friend. He told me that most of the blacks did not attack the few whites who attended, but when whites were attacked by black rioters, no blacks helped the whites.
