Photographed by Bernie Boston on October 21, 1967

[mahatmakanejeeves]

"Flower Power"

"Flower Power" is {a} historic photograph taken by photographer Bernie Boston for the now-defunct Washington Star, nominated for the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Taken on October 21, 1967{,} during a march to the Pentagon, the iconic photo shows a young, long-haired Vietnam protestor in a turtleneck sweater, placing carnations into the barrel of a rifle of a National Guardsman.
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When Boston showed the photograph to his editor at the Washington Star, he “didn’t see the importance of the picture” so it was put aside. Instead, Boston started entering it in photography competitions, and that is where it earned its recognition.
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Subject

Many debates have been brought up as to who the young demonstrator is placing the carnations in the gun barrels on that day. According to a 2007 Washington Post article by David Montgomery, his name is George Edgerly Harris III. Harris was a young actor from New York, about 18 years old, and on the similar mecca to San Francisco that the hippie movement was famous for. There, he would come out as being gay, change his name to Hibiscus, and was co-founder of the Cockettes, a “flamboyant, psychedelic gay-themed drag troupe.”

Harris died in the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s.