Emmett Grogan (born Eugene Leo Grogan, November 28, 1942 – April 6, 1978) was a founder of the Diggers, a radical community-action group of

Improvisational Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

actors in the

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...

district of San Francisco. The Diggers took their name from the English Diggers (1649–1650), a radical movement opposed to

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

, the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

and the

British Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...

Biography

Grogan's distrust of the mainstream media made it difficult for reporters to acquire more than a few details of his life. He was born on November 28, 1942, as Eugene Leo Grogan into an Irish-American family in the

Bay Ridge Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Sunset Park to the north, Dyker Heights to the east, the Narrows and the Belt Parkway to the west, and Fort Hamilton Army Base an ...

neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. According to his publisher,

New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, Ne ...

, "Grogan grew up on New York City’s mean streets, getting hooked on heroin before he was in his teens, kicking the habit and winning a scholarship to a swanky Manhattan private school, pursuing a highly profitable sideline as a

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...

burglar, then skipping town to enjoy the dolce vita in Italy." After high school, he attended Duke University for one year before moving to San Francisco. The San Francisco Diggers were a legendary group that evolved out of two radical traditions that thrived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...

peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pe ...

. The Diggers combined

street theatre Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves, college or universi ...

direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...

, and art happenings in their social agenda of creating a Free City. Their most famous activities revolved around distributing free food ("Free because it's yours!") every day in

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the developm ...

, and distributing "surplus energy" at a series of Free Stores (where everything in stock was without a price tag). The Diggers coined various slogans that became part of the counterculture and even the larger society, such as, "Do your own thing," and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." Grogan's 1972 autobiography ''Ringolevio, a Life Played for Keeps'', is regarded by some as the best and only authentic book written about the underground culture of the 1960s. In the book, Grogan refers to himself by the alias Kenny Wisdom. Peter Coyote, in the 1990 introduction to ''Ringolevio'' states that Grogan's choice of that alias is "no accident" but without elaborating. Grogan was also the author of ''Final Score,'' a crime novel published in 1976.

Criticism of counterculture

Grogan shunned media attention and became increasingly suspicious of those who sought publicity. In ''Ringolevio'', Grogan discussed the 1967

Human Be-In The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture a ...

, criticizing counterculture luminaries

Timothy Leary Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...

Jerry Rubin Jerry Clyde Rubin (July 14, 1938 – November 28, 1994) was an American social activist, anti-war leader, and counterculture icon during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman. He is known for being one of the ...

, and especially

Abbie Hoffman Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponen ...

. Grogan thought the HIP (Haight Independent Proprietors) merchants, led by Ron and Jay Thelin, who had sponsored events like the Human Be-In, were the primary beneficiaries of the events: "The HIP merchants were astounded by their own triumph by promoting such a large market for their wares. They became the Western world's taste makers overnight..." He objected to the "

Summer of Love The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury ...

" enticing of young people to the Haight-Ashbury to experience hippie life, noting that an influx of residents would cause an "immigration crisis" and the kids who came expecting an already-formed Utopia would end up living a desperate hand-to-mouth existence on the streets. He also decried the HIP merchants' "HIP Job Co-Op," revealing that much of the work they offered was

sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...

labor. He pointed out that unskilled and clerical jobs would be taken away from poor residents who depended on such work to survive.

Death

On April 6, 1978, 35-year-old Grogan was found dead on a

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October ...

train on the F train in Coney Island; he had suffered a heart attack. Close friend and Digger co-founder

Peter Coyote Peter Coyote (born Robert Peter Cohon; October 10, 1941) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, author and narrator of films, theatre, television, and audiobooks. He worked on films such as ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982), '' Cro ...

stated in his foreword to Grogan's autobiography ''Ringolevio'' that his death was due to a heroin overdose.

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

dedicated his 1978 album '' Street Legal'' to Grogan.

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – c. September 16, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. A prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four bo ...

dedicated his poem "Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only" to Grogan."Information about Emmett Grogan,"
The Richard Brautigan Archives. Accessed 2016 Nov. 15.

Personal life

Grogan was married to the French-Canadian actress Louise Latraverse; they had one son.

References

External links