American Counter-Culture During The 20th Century

Hippies are good representation of the counter culture movement, it usually involve drug abuse, sex and abortion. History professor Theodore Roszak points out the hippies and radical students have a same point, which is counter-culture. (Roszak, 1995) In his views, counter-cultural movement is all social protest movements in the United States, such as democracy movement, women's liberation movement, black civil rights movement, and anti-war movement.

Hippies represent the ideological, naive nature that children possess. They feel that with a little love and conectedness, peace and equality will abound. It is with this assumption that so many activists and reformers, inspired by the transformation that hippies cultivated, have found the will to persist in revolutionizing social and political policy. Their alternative lifestyles and radical beleifs were the shocking blow that American culture-- segregation, McCarthyism, unjust wars, censorship--needed to prove that some Americans still had the common sense to care for one another. The young people of the sixties counterculture movement were successful at awakening awareness on many causes that are being fought in modern

The members of this movement obtained the nickname, hippies, which were greatly inspired by the beat movement back in the 1950’s.

“Hippies were called Flower Children because they gave flowers to communicate gentleness and love” (Salge). The Hippie Movement was a popular counter culture during the 60’s-70’s. Hippies are best known for their practice of psychedelic drug use, interesting political views, where they took up living quarters, and their unique fashion sense.

“Make love, not war” was a common slogan during the counter-culture in the 1960‘s. The national split between opposers and supporters of the Vietnam War, greatly contributed to the counter-culture. Hippies, as part of the counter-culture, were seen as outsiders as they were outspoken about their views and their lifestyle was perceived as rather eccentric to many Americans.15 While their drug use, dress, and radical mindset came as a shock to many, the hippie’s opposition to the Vietnam War and their deep concern made a lasting impact on society through their promotion of peace and unity as well as their drive for change.16 Manson, during his trial testimony, accuses the court of waging war in Vietnam, stating, “I don't understand you, but I

From the 1960s to the 1970s, the Hippie Movement was apart of the counterculture era. This was an age of renewal and change amongst society. People known as Hippies focused on pursuing a life different from the one proposed by mainstream culture. Hippies followed transcendentalism, which influenced their idealism of their understanding of nature and society. They often used drugs such as psychedelics, amphetamines, methamphetamine, and marijuana to experience spiritual and artistic awareness as well as self-fulfillment. They created a new culture of teenagers and young adults who dressed and acted differently from those before them. Hippies focused on experimentation and redefining themselves. Hippies helped influenced music, television, film, literature, and the arts and changed the societal norms.

The 1960s Hippie movement was a major point in the American history. In the 1960s a certain class of young people associated their lifestyles with the ideas of freedom, peace, and love. Hippies acted against white upper middle class lifestyle because they thought it was based on the wrong ideology. Hippies were against consumerism and American suburban life of the late 1950s and early 1960s was embodied in itself the idea of consumerism. Hippies, on the other hand, felt better about communal life with equal distribution of social goods. Traditional “bigger share” and consumerist greed as concepts of American society were despised by Hippies.

The people that would become associated with the new teenage counter-culture movement were known as the hippies. The movement began in the mid-sixties in the United States. The hippies often believed in peace and pleasure. They even ushered in a new music genre of psychedelic rock. The Grateful Dead as well as the Beatles was famous artists coming from the movement and genre. The hippies created their own communities where they criticized the mainstream society and middle class. One thing they revolutionized was sex. The sexual revolution moved from traditional ways of behaving to more promiscuous activities and pleasures. The norms of American sexual culture would change greatly. Hippies were promoters of free love in the sexual revolution. They taught that the power of sex and love should be a part of everyday teenage life. In some colleges, they started to make dorms coed; in which the males and females could come together freely. “A

The Hippie Counter Culture began in 1960. The hippie era was influenced more by personal happiness in which books, music, and fashion followed as result of their personification of a blissful society. Hippies did not care what others thought of them and their motto was “if it feels good, do it”. Hippies were seeking a utopian society. They participated in street theater and listened to psychedelic rock. As part of their culture they embraced more open sexual encounters amongst each other in their community and believed in use of psychedelic drugs which consisted of marijuana and LSD. The fashion choice that hippies dressed in was due to set them apart from the mainstream society. They choose to buy their clothing from thrift shops and flea markets (Haddock, 2011). Clothing choices are described as “brightly colored, ragged clothes, tie-dyed t-shirts, beads, sandals (or barefoot), and jewelry” (Haddock, 2011, para 7). Hippies also referred

The mid 1900s gave birth to many counterculture movements. Some of those movements were Hip-Hop, Black Power, Beats, Punk, D.I.Y., and Hippies. The issues Hippies focused on were primarily removing the main religious standards on all things social and cultural. They were individualists who believed whatever people did, and that the choices that they made were up to them;not the church or anyone else. The Hippie counterculture was successful at freeing people from the strict societal rules on sexuality, because people in the United States are now allowed to sexually express themselves freely.

The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and

The counterculture rejected American values and lifestyles such as materialism and work. Many stopped working their jobs and joined communes where they shared property and attempted to share the work. Some who joined these communes were only “weekend

The American hippie movement of the 1960s was strengthened by the increase of youth population. Many believe the official beginning of this cultural event started with the youth of the 1960's but it really started with their parents. In the late 1930s and early 1940s America was just coming out of a disheartening depression.(About the Great Depression.) America's unfortunate fate led them into another unlucky situation, World War II. Many youthful men and women joined the service, in fact over an estimated sixteen million total were sent into the war.( GI Bill History - U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs. ) In the late 1940s soldiers coming back at the end of the war were now onto the next stage of their lives and made families. This is what started the baby boomers. After so many hardships and losses the last thing anyone expected was an approximately seventy-six million babies born between baby boomer era of about ten to fifteen years. (BBHQ: Boomer Statistics. ) Many of these children had strict parents who had become disheartened from losing childhood

From the late 1950s to the late 1970s a phenomenon erupted over the United States. A proud counter culture was born in the midst of the Vietnam War. Many people protested against the Vietnam War and the horrors that many people saw on TV because of it. Many incidents triggered the Anti-War movement and the Hippie counter culture such as the growing United States involvement in Southern Vietnam, the gruesome images that the evening news showed uncensored, the draft that caused many thousands of men to lose their lives and their minds as the end result of the war. This war triggered a great sense of what is right and wrong in specifically young people. Social justice and moral justice were some of the main focal points of the Anti-War and Hippie movements. This war allowed teenagers and young adults to have power in what they believe in and to stand up against unjust killings of our men and innocent lives in Vietnam. The eighteen-year span of the war from 1956 -1975 saw the rise and eventually the fall of the anti-war movement and the hippie movement.

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement beginning in the United States around the early 1960s and consisted of a group of people who opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing an ideology that favored peace, love, and personal freedom. The hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, were usually eco-friendly and vegetarians, and promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. They created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs to explore alternative states of consciousness. They strived to liberate themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life.