40 Year Itch : Human Kindness Day, 1975

Photo taken at Human Kindness Day festivities by Skip Coblyn

Graham Central Station : Water

[Purchase]

“So much for kindness. I don’t want to be around on Human Cruelty Day.” - letter to the Washington Post

    125,000 people showed up to hear Stevie Wonder, Graham Central Station and Black Heat perform on the Washington Monument grounds. Despite a lack of meaningful police presence, all was fairly peaceful until Wonder finished his set. That's when Human Kindness Day got mean and ugly. There were 500 robberies, 600 injuries and 150 people treated in local hospitals.

    "People were blindly grabbing handbags," one concert-goer said. "It got to be a thing to grab open a women's blouse and rip it and run".

   A man named Steven Laine was stabbed in the eye while he was walking across the green on his way home from work. One hell of a way to pay tribute to Stevie Wonder.

  For more read this Washington Post article