The Festival for Peace was an all day concert event produced at Shea Stadium

Shea Stadium

William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, usually shortened to Shea Stadium or just Shea , was a stadium in the New York City borough of Queens, in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. It was the home baseball park of Major League Baseball's New York Mets from 1964 to 2008...

 in Queens, NY on August 6, 1970.
It was the second event of a series planned to raise funds for anti-war candidates in the early 1970s. The first, the Winter Festival for Peace, took place in Madison Square Garden earlier in the year. The date selected for the Summer event was of particular interest as it was also the 25th anniversary of the U.S. first use of an atomic weapon in the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The concert, advertised as the Summer Festival for Peace, was scheduled for 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM although several last-minute performers and extended sets added about two hours. Seating was General Admission by tier in the stadium.

Very little media has survived and no film of this concert has surfaced publicly despite the fact that it featured such historic performers as Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...

, Paul Simon

Paul Simon

Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...

, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums....

, Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (band)

Steppenwolf are a Canadian-American rock group that was prominent in the late 1960s. The group was formed in 1967 in Los Angeles by vocalist John Kay, guitarist Michael Monarch, bassist Rushton Moreve, keyboardist Goldy McJohn and drummer Jerry Edmonton after the dissolution of Toronto group The...

, The James Gang, Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, Johnny Winter

Johnny Winter

John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters...

, Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

 and a dozen other important acts of the period. The Festival for Peace was the first major concert at Shea Stadium

Shea Stadium

William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, usually shortened to Shea Stadium or just Shea , was a stadium in the New York City borough of Queens, in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. It was the home baseball park of Major League Baseball's New York Mets from 1964 to 2008...

 since the last performance of The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 in 1966.

It proved to be one of the last performances for Janis Joplin who died only two months later, as well as a reunion and last performance with her former band, Big Brother & the Holding Company. When the concert was first announced, Joplin was not scheduled to perform, but Big Brother was on the bill. She was in NYC to do two appearances on Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett

Richard Alva "Dick" Cavett is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues...

's television show with her new band (Full Tilt Boogie

Full Tilt Boogie

Full Tilt Boogie is a 1997 documentary directed by Sarah Kelly. It chronicles the production of the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn.It features extensive interviews with the cast and crew covering a variety of topics related to the film. This includes the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage...

) and decided to perform with her former band while in town. During the August 3rd appearance with Cavett, Joplin announced her intention to play at the Festival, spoke of the show and described the concert as being produced by Peter Yarrow

Peter Yarrow

Peter Yarrow is an American singer who found fame with the 1960s folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow co-wrote one of the group's most famous songs, "Puff, the Magic Dragon"...

 (of the singing group Peter, Paul & Mary).

Other sources confirm that Mr. Yarrow, by then a well-known peace advocate, together with Phil Friedmann (an Amherst graduate who worked in the campaign for the Democratic nomination of Sen. Eugene McCarthy for President) produced the Summer Festival after their huge success of the Winter Festival for Peace at Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

 in February, 1970.

The importance of these concerts were manifold. First, unlike the for-profit Woodstock Music & Arts Fair which became increasingly political as it unfolded, the Festivals for Peace were the first large venue U.S. events which were produced with the sole intention of fund raising for political, and specifically anti-war, purposes: not unusual later but not seen prior to 1970. Secondly, again in contrast to Woodstock where performers insisted on being paid, Peter Yarrow and Friedmann were able to convince the top acts of the day (including many that were paid at Woodstock like CCR, Hendrix and Joplin) to donate their time and performances to the Festival for Peace shows just months after Woodstock.

This was the first time that the world's biggest rock, jazz, blues and folk performers came together and donated their performances to aid a specific social/political agenda. The Summer Festival for Peace was the first of many, more publicized benefit concerts in the future. As such it paved the way for The Concert for Bangladesh

The Concert for Bangladesh

The Concert for Bangladesh was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7 PM on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City...

 (August 1, 1971), Farm Aid

Farm Aid

Farm Aid started as a benefit concert on September 22, 1985, in Champaign, Illinois, held to raise money for family farmers in the United States...

 (September 22, 1985), Live Aid

Live Aid

Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...

, etc. by demonstrating the fundraising potential for such large scale musical events.