A presentation at Electric Earth Caf� Friday showed how the Mifflin Street Block Party has changed significantly since its beginnings on May 1, 1969, moving from a political protest to an apolitical drinking event.

Madison activist David Williams celebrated May Day with a presentation of the political and social climate at the University of Wisconsin through the years that led to the creation of the present-day Mifflin Street Block Party.

“The event was political in a cultural and social sense,” Williams said. “The government wanted to show a bunch of hippie radicals they didn’t have as much freedom as they thought.”

A year or so before the first Mifflin event, the university changed housing regulations, which allowed students to live off-campus and in non-university housing Williams said. Some began a co-op on Mifflin which became the center of the student anti-war movement in the area.

Williams said in the late 1960s, Madison community members viewed the Mifflin Street area, which was dubbed “Miffland,” as a “radical, hippie” neighborhood.

According to Williams, who took part in the first Mifflin event, tensions between UW students, UW officials and Madison police officers from previous campus protests led to violence between police and students.

Since the city did not grant students a permit to host a block party on Mifflin Street, the Madison Police Department was sent to break up the event, Williams said.

However students were angered by the aggressive tactics police used to end the riot, which included beating students, using tear gas and arresting students, Williams added. The brawl lasted for several days.

“By June of 1969, Mifflin Street had become a radical symbol,” Williams said. “The [Mifflin Street] area was sort of a source of fascination for local powers that be.”

According to Williams and other early Mifflin participants, the violence forced the Madison community to re-examine the actions taken by the city and MPD, which led to a drastic improvement in the relations between students and cops.

“I was certainly impressed with the police action I saw on State Street with Halloween revelers when I came here in 2004 compared to what I saw on Miffland,” Williams said.

Musician Aarick Beher, who began attending the event a few years after it began, said Mifflin gradually changed from a political protest to a music-centered event, adding the block party began to feature a wide variety of music and student bands.

“The politics have gone away, but the music didn’t go for a while,” Beher said.

Madison resident Gretta Wing Miller, who attended the early Mifflin block parties, said in the 1960s students used to smoke more marijuana and drink less alcohol during the event.

Miller said the Mifflin Street Block Party has become de-politicized and many students today do not know the events’ radical roots.

This year, for the first time since 1995, the Mifflin Street Block Party was granted a sponsor. However, Williams said the event lost a lot of its meaningful edge.

“It’s kind of ironic that an event that started out as a protest against local government powers is now being sponsored,” Williams said.