ESTIMATE ON GIANT ANTIWAR MARCH SCORED AS A LIE
The efforts of the New York police to minimize the giant antiwar demonstration in that city April 15 by claiming that "only" 125,000 turned out, has stirred sharp protests.
The figure was so fantastically different from the reality that even the New York Times felt it had no recourse but to open its columns to the dispute... In its April 19 edition it ran a 22-inch. story. on the subject.
As against the police figure, Robert Greenblatt, an assistant professor of mathematics at Cornell University and one of the cochairmen of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, said, "There was a minimum of 400 , 000 people there."
Dr. Martin Luther King, who has had long experience in speaking to big crowds, estimated that the number of people packed into the United Nations Plaza at the time he spoke was somewhere be- ‘tween 100,000 and 200,000.
In addition, all the streets approaching the Plaza were jammed, the line of march still extended back to: Central ‘Park, and Sheep Meadow,: the assembly point, was still crowded.
After the speeches had ended at. the UN Plaza, the march still .continued for well over another hour despite persistent efforts of the 3,000 police to disperse me crowd by turning them away from the aza.
‘The last contingents entered the big square before the UN headquarters at about 6 p.m. in face of a heavy downpour. They had been waiting at the assémbly point since 11 a. m. for their turn to march.
In the photograph on the next page the line of march is shown near the exit at Central Park.
The size of the crowd can be judged from the fact that the marchers poured past this point steadily for about six hours.
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