catsandwitchcraft:

catsandwitchcraft:

catsandwitchcraft:

kristina-meister:

jimmythejiver:

thecringeandwincefactory:

wonderdave:

The whole Pepsi commercial thing reminded me that people always mis-remember the famous flower in the gun barrel photo as being a young woman. It wasn’t. The photo, taken by Bernie Boston, is of George Edgerly Harris III better known by his stage name Hibiscus. He was a member of the San Francisco based radical gay liberation theater troupe the Cockettes. He died of AIDS in 1982 at the time AIDS was still referred to by the name GRID which stood for Gay Related Immuno-Deficiency. The photo was taken at a protest at the Pentagon. 

I had no idea who he was, thank you.

This is one example of the Mandela Effect phenomena, where an iconic moment is reenacted with a hippy woman so many times that people think that’s the story and thus another gay man is written out of history. Thanks for the photo.

I had no idea. Wow.

This photo was taken by Bernie Boston, a black/native man who willingly stood up to a chapter of the KKK and earned their respect among other things

I get the subject is important, but please dont erase Bernie. I knew him personally and he deserves to be remembered and by only remembering the subject, a white man, you erase a black man.

@vaspider could you reblog this version too, please? I am deeply upset by Bernie’s erasure from his own work.

OMG! The Pepsi ad is so gross, revolting and a trivialization of people who put themselves in harm’s way at anti-Vietnam-war demos, time and time again. And were not paid for it (unlike  Kendall Jenner).

It is very interesting how people remember history. An earlier use of the symbolism of the flowers vs. guns was at demonstrations at UC Berkeley (1965) and shortly thereafter spread around the country. It was a couple of years later that there were a few captures of that image at one of the big demonstrations at the Pentagon. Among photos taken that days was the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Bernie Boston of George Edgerly Harris III 21 October 1967. 

The one above was another famous photo circulated internationally –   taken same day, the same demonstration of 100,000 people in D.C. – by French photojournalist  Marc Riboud 21 October 1967 March on the Pentagon of a 17-year-old female high school student named Jan Rose Kasmir. Nobody was copying anyone in the case of those iconic photos. 

Here is another photo taken that same day– October 21, 1967 –  same March on the Pentagon. (Photo by S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson)

Also, Bread and Puppet Theater in New York City staged numerous protests during that period which included handing out balloons and flowers to armed forces (military, national guard, and police). I personally recall witnessing several young women at UC Berkeley sticking flowers into guns around that same time–not me! I never placed myself that close to a gun barrel, I wanted to live to protest another day. And I thought the “flower power” concept was bullshit at the time–naive and apolitical. But that was me–I was hardcore serious about my politics.

So the statement that “people always mis-remember the famous flower in the gun barrel photo as being a young woman” is accurate if one assumes they are recalling the Bernie Boston photo, but there were many other similar photos and some included young women. Bernie Boston got a Pulitzer prize so his was perhaps the best known at the time, but not the only flower-power photo which received wide circulation and attention.