It's 1963, and the Sixties are starting to happen!

May 16, 1963, Vol. VIII, No. 30

By J.R. Goddard

Pickets bearing "Split The War Scene" and other pacifist placards were nearly outnumbered by the police at a demonstration in front of the Atomic Energy Commission on Hudson Street last Wednesday.

The pickets, many of them students, totalled about seventy during the afternoon as they helped observe a world-wide general strike for peace. A large body of police including plainclothesmen were on hand to control them, presumably because of a similar strike gesture at the AEC last year in which demonstrators blocked the building's entrance by sitting down on the sidewalk. On that occasion one demonstrator was arrested, but this time there was no trouble.

Signs and placards carried by the group called on the AEC employees inside the building to "End War, Let Mankind Live." One large yellow sign merely said "Love." The demonstrators from time to time filled out a smaller picket line around the corner on Varick Street in front of the Internal Revenue Office. Occasionally strong gusts of wind caught the placards and nearly tore them out of their hands. One girl, bearing a particularly large "All Men Are Equal" sign, was propelled down the street when the win caught it and nearly collided with a lamppost.

The large cadre of police on hand seemed somewhat embarrassed at having to patrol such a small and quiet demonstration. Passers-by stopped momentarily to look at the signs, but few attempted to question or argue with the pacifists.

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]