Flower Power (photograph)

Flower Power is a historic photograph taken by American photographer Bernie Boston for the now-defunct Washington Star newspaper. It was nominated for the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Taken on October 21, 1967, during the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam's March on the Pentagon, the iconic photo shows a Vietnam War protestor placing a carnation into the barrel of a rifle held by a soldier of the 503rd Military Police Battalion.

When the antiwar demonstrators approached the Pentagon, Boston was sitting on top of a wall of the Mall Entrance when he saw a lieutenant march a squad of guardsmen into the crowd of demonstrators. The squad then formed a semicircle around the demonstrators, the young man in the photo emerged from the crowd and started placing carnations in the rifles. Boston took it as an opportunity to capture the moment, seeing that "everything came together" and he had a good angle sitting on top of the wall.

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, where it earned its recognition.

Many debates have been brought up as to the identity of the young demonstrator 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, who later made the Summer of Love pilgrimage to San Francisco that for which the hippie movement was famous. There, he came out as gay, changed his name to Hibiscus, and co-founded The Cockettes, a "flamboyant, psychedelic gay-themed drag troupe."

Harris died in the early 1980s during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

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