Grateful Dead

For a week, 5,000 students had occupied five buildings on the Morningside Heights campus, protesting the university’s connection to the military industrial complex and it plans to build a gym in Morningside Park, a public park in the mostly African-American neighborhood next to campus. Police had forcibly removed the strikers from the buildings the days prior to their arrival, but the entire campus was in a sort of “lockdown” with police and guards denying access to the majority of the campus. This gave legendary tour manager Rock Skully an idea. Never one to shy away from confrontation and always the promoter, he got ahold of the strike organizers and offered to hold a free show on the campus. Knowing the police would never permit this, the band and their equipment had to be smuggled in. “Just think of the publicity,” I’m sure Skully thought. ” San Francisco’s Grateful Dead fooling the cops to play for New York student radicals.” The band members, also not ones to shy away from the spotlight of the fuzz, Merry Pranskter blood running through their veins, thought this was a great idea. Both the Grateful Dead and their equipment made it from the outskirts of campus to Low Library Plaza in the heart of campus in the back of a bread delivery truck, and they were already set up and playing before the security and police could mobilize to stop it.