Earth Day 1970: The Beginning of a Movement

The first Earth Day, on April 22nd, 1970, was, in the parlance of the times, a “happening.” It unfurled across the country in countless iterations. In Manhattan, picnic blankets were set out on Fifth Avenue, which was shut down to traffic. In Boston, people were arrested at Logan Airport for protesting noise pollution. In Tacoma, Washington, high school students rode down a highway on horseback to protest automobiles. In San Francisco, oil was dumped into the reflecting pool at the offices of Standard Oil. And “trash-ins” were held all over, with groups cleaning up aluminum cans and other litter, an activity that would become a fixture of the decades of Earth Days to come. Politicians left, right, and center embraced the cause in the beginning — “like Mother’s Day, no man in public office could be against it,” the New York Times wrote in 1970 (though a few conservatives did point out that April 22nd was Vladimir Lenin’s birthday and deduced Earth Day was likely a communist plot.)

It is unlikely that the words “climate change” or “global warming” were spoken by any of the estimated 20 million people who participated in that first Earth Day. But in other ways, the pleas of participants would be all too familiar to us — that we must limit pollution, along with greed, and listen to scientists if we want an Earth that continues to be habitable. “The environmental community was never about public health until the first Earth Day. That was the big line that people crossed over,” says Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day network. “It’s about our health, the health of the planet. It’s about taking action.” Fifty years later, we’re still having the same fights — and the stakes have only gotten higher — but here’s a look at the day the modern environmental movement was born.

At left, a Pace University student smells a magnolia through a gas mask in City Hall Park in Manhttan during the first Earth Day. 

The Eve of Earth Day, Philadelphia, April 21st, 1970

In Philadelphia, the city celebrated an entire Earth Week, organized by graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania’s design departments. On April 21st, 1970 — the eve of Earth Day — roughly 7,000 people gathered on Independence Mall, where Ralph Nader gave a keynote address and the cast of Hair sang the hit show’s big numbers, “Air,” and “Let the Sunshine In.”

Schoolchildren Clean New York City’s Union Square on Earth Day

Across the country, nearly 10 million public-schoolchildren took part in Earth Day “teach-ins” — but parochial schools got in on the action, too. In New York City, students from the Convent of the Sacred Heart School on the Upper East Side headed downtown to Union Square with brooms, literally cleaning up the city they called home.

Earth Day Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Denis Hayes (pictured here) was a Harvard graduate student when he was hired by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson to organize a day of action for the environment. They first conceptualized it as a “teach-in” — but ad man Julian Koenig (legendary creator of Volkswagon’s “Think Small” campaign and father to Serial podcaster Sarah Koenig) thought Earth Day had a better ring to it.

Hot Air Over Cerritos College

To celebrate the first Earth Day, Cerritos College invited famed hot-air balloonist George Stokes to land one of his contraptions on their southern California campus. 

U.C. Irvine Gets Out

Students from the University of California, Irvine, took a trolley car with a poster reading “Recognize the Polluter, Recognize Ourselves,” to a local dump. The university was one of the first to establish a social ecology program, which had begun with just one professor and 20 students that January.

“Survival Walk” for Earth Day

In support of Earth Day, 50 marchers made a 500-mile “survival walk” from Sacramento to L.A., organized by a group called Ecology Action in Berkeley. The group was founded by Cliff and Mary Humphrey, who would become recycling pioneers by starting the country’s first citizens’ recycling center.

‘Die-In’ at Logan Airport

More than a dozen students were arrested at Boston’s Logan Airport on Earth Day 1970, according to the Harvard Crimson, after bringing coffins into the middle of the TWA terminal to stage a “die-in.” Specifically, the students were protesting the governmental construction of the SST — a supersonic passenger plane that would eventually be marketed as the Concorde — which they saw as a threat to the planet’s atmosphere.

Earth Day Clean Up

An essential tenet of Earth Day was the importance of cleaning the planet. In Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, 14-year-old Terry Seuss took to the side of Rte. 17 to pick up cans. 

Hunting for Recyclable Trash in Colorado

At Alameda High School outside Denver, Colorado, students participated in a scavenger hunt to collect recyclable waste, bringing their discoveries back to the parking lot of the Villa Italia shopping mall. They hoped to illustrate how necessary it is to recycle and reuse everyday products.

The Environmental Action Coalition’s Earth Day Preparations

The Environmental Action Coalition was established in 1970 to focus on issues of waste disposal and recycling, and to get New York City communities involved in the fight for a cleaner planet. Here, on April 20th, 1970, two days before Earth Day, staffers man their headquarters in the New York Theological Seminary building.

Planting Trees

At the Colorado Academy in Denver, students spent Earth Day 1970 cleaning the school’s 74-acre campus. Here, juniors Mike Charbonneau and Mike Maxwell help dig some of the 260 holes for trees and shrubs to be planted on their grounds.

‘Bike Hike’ to Denver

On Earth Day 1970, Peter Cohen of the University of Colorado led the “Bike Hike,” a group of cyclists who trekked from Boulder to Denver, picking up participants as they went. In all, 260 individuals rode to Currigan Hall where they met up with hundreds of other participants for a 12-hour teach-in.  

Earth Day In Boston

While homemade masks have become a common sight, for the first Earth Day, some participants — like these shown in Boston Common — wore masks to protest worsening air quality across America. That same year, Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, which allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

New York City Mayor John Lindsay Rides the Rails

In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay rode the subway in honor of Earth Day, promoting what he saw as the transportation of the future. “We’re building twelve new subway lines in New York City,” the mayor told NBC that day. “The city is contributing a billion dollars over the next ten years to mass transit construction. And then, more and more, we are discouraging automobile use in the central business areas.”

Earth Day In Union Square Park

For the first Earth Day, New York City shut down Fifth Avenue from 59th St. to 14th St., and 14th St. from Seventh Ave. to Third Ave. In Union Square — where the two strips of road met — Earth Day revelers swept the street, planted flowers, and held up signs protesting the pollution of the planet.

Kissing in the Park

Gas masks were also a common site on the first Earth Day, a signal of the anxieties about increasing smog over industrial cities.

Earth Day for Governor Rockefeller

For Earth Day, Governor Nelson Rockefeller rode a bike the wrong way up an Albany Street. He also signed a bill creating the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which celebrates its 50th year this July.

Demonstrators Paddle Down Milwaukee River

The residents of Milwaukee — in the home state of Sen. Gaylord Nelson — took the first Earth Day seriously, with protests, teach-ins, and musical performanes. Some made rafts and paddled down the Milwaukee River. 

St. Louis Students Marching Against Air Pollution

For the students at Nipher Junior High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, the first Earth Day was an occasion for protest. St. Louis as a whole celebrated the occasion with teach-ins on pollution and other environmental problems of the day.