Their last major hit, the 1968 recording of "People Got To Be Free", reached #1 on the US Pop charts. It had long been thought that the song was written as a reaction to the assassinations of
Martin Luther King and
Robert F. Kennedy, but it was actually written prior to those murders. The band's tour bus had broken down in Fort Pierce, Florida, and it was surrounded by a mob of local rednecks who heard that a busload of "hippies" were in town and who threatened to board the bus and kill them all.