Where the Beats Sang: Washington Square’s Forgotten Protest

At the start of Fifth Avenue sits the grand Washington Square Arch, welcoming New Yorkers and visitors alike into the heart of Greenwich Village. Today, on a stroll through the park, one might find street artists performing in the empty fountain, college students sharing a quick lunch between classes, and strangers deep in conversation about art, politics, and social change. Since opening to the public in 1827, the park has been the vibrant nucleus of the neighborhood and the backdrop for so many of New York’s most noteworthy political and social movements. With a rich history of protests and public dissent, the park has long served as a gathering place for voices demanding change. 

Home to sites like Stonewall Inn and countless organizations aimed at social, political, or cultural change, our neighborhood is no stranger to protests of great import and impact. One often overlooked but supremely important example is the April 9, 1961 Beatnik Riots in Washington Square Park.

The Beat movement arose in the post-World War II years as a rejection of mainstream values like consumerism and conformity. Disillusioned young people sought meaning and purpose through art, spirituality, and rebellion. The term “Beat” was first used by writer Jack Kerouac to describe his own circle of fellow creatives like Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, using a term which evoked music, spiritual transcendence, and surrender to overwhelming forces. For the Beats, the emptiness and lack of meaning in modern society were reason enough to reject it—through both retreat and rebellion.

By the early 60s, the movement’s initial buzz and attention cooled down for the most part, but not in Washington Square Park. Deeply connected to the local folk scene, Beat musicians, thinkers, and troubadours alike gathered in the park every Sunday, using it as a stage for song, connection, and expression.

But by April 1961, the recently appointed Parks Commissioner of New York City, Newbold Morris, cracked down on the Beats (or “Beatniks,” as they were often derisively referred to as) and invoked a rarely enforced city law requiring individuals to apply for and hold a permit to play music in the park. He claimed the gatherings disturbed the peace. In truth, however, with the Beats and folk music came the proliferation of counterculture ideas and people. It wasn’t merely the singing Morris wanted gone with, it was what they were singing and who was singing it.

And sang they did. When their permit requests were denied, they returned in force to protest. Izzy Young of the Folklore Center helped organize the demonstration, saying:

“It wasn’t run by any political party,” Young says. “It was run by the idea I … and others [had] that people had a right to sing. So it’s a peaceful demonstration asking for our rights.”

Police responded with arrests and force, on grounds of disorderly conduct. After diplomacy didn’t work, the crowd began to sing renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” Filmmaker Dan Drasin documents what the protests were like that day in his 17-minute, impressionistic documentary entitled “Sunday.”

Eventually, the Beatniks got their permit and the music returned to the neighborhood. The Beatnik Riots may have started as a fight for the right to sing in a public space, but they became a powerful reminder that even in the face of resistance, creativity, community, and protest have always had a home in Washington Square Park.