Hippies in Daffin Park: Where were you in '72?

" ... Before closing the Daffin Park history book, at least one overlooked chapter begs for a little investigation. That chapter is titled “The People’s Park: Ground Zero for Savannah’s Counter Culture.”

 

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I’m told that the impact of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love didn’t reach Savannah until two or three years later, while I was still a member of my mom’s Brownie Troop.

Sometime during that era I recall several instances of riding in the back seat of the car, Mom at the wheel, as we rolled past the corner of Victory Drive and Bee Road, the location of Daffin Park, a somewhat neglected section of the unremarkably landscaped public facility. At some point in this period, less than a decade after Daffin Park was center stage for two racial desegregation lawsuits, this corner of Daffin became known as “The People’s Park,” the unofficial gathering place for Savannah’s hippies.

Savannah’s beatnik gathering place was likely named for the original People’s Park in Berkeley, Calif., site of a 1969 confrontation between 30,000 counter culture folks “armed with peace signs and daisies” and 2,000 members of the California National Guard, according to the American Friends Service Committee website.

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In the next few weeks I’m heading to the public library to wade through microfiche copies of the Savannah Morning News for articles about the Lieutenant Calley demonstration. Now that Savannah’s 1970’s hippies have children and grandchildren, some of them hippies themselves, I’m hoping to find one or two People’s Park alumni willing to share their recollections of this chapter in our history. ... "

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