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How an innocent gesture during the 1967 March on the Pentagon came to symbolize the beliefs of an entire generation ...

One of the most iconic photographs of the 1960s, "Flower Power," taken during October 21, 1967 March on the Pentagon, earned photographer Bernie Boston a 1967 Pulitzer Prize nomination and a lifetime's worth of reprint requests. But despite its significance, both as historical artifact and work of art, "Flower Power" was buried in the Washington Star.

"I thought it was a nice picture," Boston said. "And my editors thought it was a nice picture. But I think they wound up running it on page A12."

A native Washingtonian, Boston followed the thousands of war protestors on their march from the Lincoln Memorial, across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and into Pentagon City, where Beat poet Allen Ginsberg led a chant in hopes of levitating the Pentagon.

"I was sitting on top of a wall outside the entrance of the [National] Mall when they marched a squad into this stream of demonstrators," Boston said. "Having taken Psyche 101 – you know, where there's an action there's a reaction – I started watching from this unusual vantage point. There was a skirmish, and one soldier lost his helmet, and then suddenly this kid appears and starts placing carnations in the rifles. I thought it was a fairly peaceful way to react."

The kid turned out to be 18-year-old George Edgerly Harris III, a young actor from New York. Not long after the March on the Pentagon, he moved to San Francisco and, under the stage name of Hibiscus, co-founded the gender-bending performance troupe known as the Cockettes. He died in 1982, an early casualty of the AIDS epidemic.

"I never spoke to that young man," said Boston, now 73. "I only found out his name through his brother, who conducted a benefit and called me to ask if he could use the photo. I said yes, of course. I wish I could have shaken his hand."

Boston's "Flower Power" lost the 1967 Pulitzer Prize (to Jack Thornell's photo of the shooting of civil rights leader James Meredith), but Boston stayed on as director of photography for the Washington Star until its closing in 1981. Through the 1980s he covered the Reagan White House for the L.A. Times. In 2001, he and wife Peggy bought the Bryce Mountain Courier, a small newspaper covering Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

Last fall, his favorite shots were compiled for the book, "Bernie Boston: American Photojournalist." Naturally, "Flower Power" made up the cover.

This is the fourth in our "Our Defining Moments" series, an ongoing ReZoom.com People feature looking back on the moments that, through the power of photography, have been emblazoned into our collective consciousness. To see a previous "Our Defining Moments," click here.