Bloody Thursday: how People’s Park became a battleground

At 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 15, 1969 250 California Highway Patrol officers arrived at newly constructed People’s Park, while a helicopter buzzed overhead. They cleared a few people who were sleeping on the fresh sod and put up a chain link fence. As the sun rose, Berkeley’s newest green space, a symbol of an alternative vision of society, was enclosed behind a perimeter of state police officers.