The flower power movement, symbolized by a photo of a teenager putting daisies in the barrels of guns held by the National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War, advocated for love and non-violence. It had both positive and negative consequences, including civil rights progress and drug addiction. The movement’s emphasis on flowers and nonviolent civil disobedience reflected its ties to nature and the earth. The movement ultimately declined in the early 1970s.
There is a photograph, taken in 1967 at the March on Washington protesting the Vietnam War. The photo, which narrowly missed out on winning the Pulitzer Prize, shows a teenager stuffing daisies into the barrels of guns held by members of the US National Guard. The boy in the photo is George Edgerly Harris III, who sadly died of AIDS in 1982, but this moment, captured by photographer Bernie Boston, symbolizes the flower power movement. Flower Power is a phrase probably coined by Alan Ginsberg in 1965 and referred to the hippie notion of “making love not war” and the idea that love and non-violence, like growing flowers, were a better way to heal the world than a continued focus on capitalism and wars.
Flower power also became a term used to express the hippie culture itself, and hippies were often referred to as flower children. The power of the group left an indelible mark on American society. Large groups of teenagers and young adults who wore flowers in their hair, painted them on their vans, and lived together in semi-communes, often outdoors in big-city parks, had some power as a group. In the best sense, this power has infiltrated mainstream public opinion that promotes civil rights. On the contrary, the counterculture movement that can be called flower power had many unintended consequences: unwanted pregnancies, drug addiction, large-scale importation of drugs and the development of drug cartels, and the sexual revolution it would to some extent create the rapid spread of HIV infection in the early 1980s.
Garishly painted flowers on vans, record covers, and the like were also symbolic of hippies advocating for hallucinogens in hopes of creating greater self-awareness, a practice not uncommon in other cultures, especially in the past. When hallucinogens were used, visual hallucinations often occurred, and things with intense colors appeared even more intense. If you look at a movie like The Yellow Submarine that first came out in 1968, there are a lot of visual moments that would definitely have had a bigger impact on people taking drugs like acid and LSD.
The film also has numerous images of flowers suddenly growing, budding, and covering barren landscapes suggesting the spread of the flower power movement, although the term flower power is not used in the film. However, the final song of the film is closely related to this movement: “All You Need Is Love”. The idea of the growth of love, the natural progress of love, and the power of love ties in well with actions taken by hippies such as the planting of flowers on bare lots in Berkeley in 1969 during a two-week occupation by part of the US National Guard.
The idea of using flowers to express a movement is at the heart of the hippie identity. The emphasis was on acts of civil disobedience that were nonviolent. What could be more nonviolent than handing out flowers to National Guard members or planting flowers on vacant lots? The simplicity of the flower, its ties to the earth and natural origin and its beauty were all things this counterculture movement wanted to stay close to. Ultimately, there is a beauty and a grace to the flower power movement, even if it ultimately ended badly for more than a few people. Like many movements that may have many good intentions, certain aspects, such as the emphasis on drug use, have contributed to its destruction. Like any flower, the flower power movement boomed for a time in the mid to late 1960s, then withered away in the early 1970s.
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