It was Sunday morning, September 16, 1963. It was "Youth Day" at the 16th Street Baptist Church, which was crowded with its Negro congregation, about 400 adults and 80 children. A car slowed down as it passed the church, and someone threw a bomb into the building.

Four little girls were killed as they sat in Sunday school. Dozens were injured when the bomb went off. About 2,000 people rushed towards the site of the bombing, and angry Negroes throughout Birmingham stoned cars driven by Whites.

By nightfall, Birmingham was near a riot, with fires reported throughout the city. City police shot a 16 year old Negro to death when he refused to halt after he was caught stoning cars. Another 13 year old was shot and killed as he rode his bicycle in a suburban part of the city.

Mexico City,was the site of the 1968 Summer Olympics. The Black athletes were not at all happy. They wanted equal treatment as Americans. Before the Olympics, the Black athletes had threated to boycott and not attend the games. They later decided that they would attend.

The issue was "racism." Blacks were not treated equally here in the USA. Two athletes would demonstrate to the world that all was not well in the US. Black athletes were tired of the treatment they received at home. "White America will only give us credit for an Olympic victory," Tommie Smith said at the time. "They'll say I'm an American, but if I did something bad, they'd say a Negro."

Tommie Smith and John Carlos won their races, placing first and third in the 200 meters. In front of millions of TV viewers, as the National Anthem played, they bowed their heads and raised their arms, wearing black gloves with fist closed.

This protest shocked the world. The Olympic committee gave the two athletes 48 hours to leave the games. There were more protests but on smaller scales; some atlethes wore black socks. George Foreman carried a small Olympic flag around after winnning his fight with Ionas Chepulis.

Spurred on by earlier occupations of governemnt land by Chicanos, a group of approximately 100 Native Americans led by Richard Oakes began the occupation of Alcatraz Island on November 20, 1969. The protesters claimed the island as their own and pressed the US government to cede all rights to the island to its rightful owners.

The 19-month occupation of Alcatraz brought together Indians from various tribes throughout North America. The occupation brought Native issues worldwide attention and proved a watershed event in the activist movement, instilling many occupiers with a new sense of "Indianness." The occupation was brought to an end on June 11, 1971 when President Nixon ordered the remaining occupiers removed.

They called it The Woodstock Aquarian Arts Fair and Exposition, but it came to be known simply as Woodstock. It was meant to be held in the hip, artsy village of Woodstock in Ulster County, N.Y. The powers to be in the village killed that idea.

They then moved to the township of Walkill in Orange County. There too they were driven out. This was probably lucky because if Walkill can be said to have a soul, it is the soul of a shopping mall. It would not have been the event it became.

Then they got lucky. They ended up with a field that was a natural ampitheater at the farm of Max Yasgar in Sullivan County, my home county. Woodstock had finally found its home in the township of Bethel. Bethel, what an appropriate name that is. Beth-el, in Hebrew that literally means House of God. And for one glorious weekend in August 1969, it truly was a place blessed by God. Even his thunderstorms were there to test us and bond us.

One of the first things I did when I had internet access was look up Woodstock pages. After signing guestbooks, I seemed for a while to become popular with people doing research on the subject. A student at I believe Duke asked me for a list of anti-war songs sung at Woodstock. I did my best to comply, but he missed the point. Yes we were against the war, but that was not the way that Woodstock was political. If there was a political statemnt, it was that there were hundreds of thousands of us "freaks" caring more for human values than for the values of the industrial-military complex. We had found each other and we were all affected.

Another more common request I received was to try to put Woodstock into the context of the '60s. My replies were always along the following line. Our music bonded us. There was rock music. There was not hard rock, soft rock, punk rock, heavy metal, grunge, hip-hop, rap, etc., etc., etc. It was OUR music. There was no way our parents' generation would ever listen to the Grateful Dead or Janis Joplin or any of our musical heroes. When so many of them were to play together we were drawn like moths to a flame. Throw in the storms and becoming a disaster area ("There's a little bit of heaven in a disaster area."----Wavy Gravy) and we were all inexorably bonded; our lives would be changed forever.

People are often surprised that I have never returned to that field even for some of the impomptu reunions. I try to explain you cannot recreate magic; it must be there of its own accord. Maybe someday if the cultural divide in this country between the values of the '60s and the values of those who feel justified in hating whatever is different from themselves is resolved in our favor, maybe then I will set foot again on this piece of Holy Land.

Maybe I will recall Richie Havens energetically opening with "Freedom", or the music of Santana, a group that practically no one had heard of because they were still months short of releasing their debut album, but a group that astounded us all. Maybe I will remember Arlo Guthrie saying "The Thruway is closed, man." Even though the nearest thruway exit was forty plus miles away, this was probably true. Or I could recall Janis Joplin ending her set in the wee hours of Saturday night/ Sunday morning and whoever was doing the announcing getting those who seemed to be leaving to sit back down by saying, "If you leave now all you'll miss are Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, and the Jefferson Airplane." Or, I guess I could go on forever, so I better stop now.