During the 1960s, a new culture spread throughout the United States, stirring up the Flower Power

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 anti-war movement was started by “leftist” members of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, started to organize groups to teach college students about the opposition to the war (history.com). As the movement grew, so did its following. Some of whom were the members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. In 1969, President Nixon claimed that the anti-war protestants were made up of a “small-albeit-vocal-minority” that allegedly “drowned” out the voices of the majority American views. This speech drove the nation to tear even more and then came the final leap into brutal riots- the draft lottery (history.com). The hippie culture went mobile and took protests to capital cities like Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and then ending in colossal gathering in Washington D.C.

Though many people became hippies or just supported the hippies, there were a number of Americans who did not approve of the hippie lifestyle and culture. When Ronald Regan was the governor of California, he once defined a hippie as someone “who looked like Tarzan, walked like Jane, and smelled like Cheetah.”Along with stating this, he did not support the way hippies thought life should be lived in America (Chepesiuk 1). The violence increased as the population of hippies got larger and violence was greatly increased after a black male was stabbed at a California “free music festival” (Firm 128). The number of drug arrests and rapes raised as more criminals moved in to take advantage of the young, free living people (Chepesiuk 1). Hippie icons began to die of drug overdoses and the outraged emotions of the hippies who looked up to them, eventually led to more violence. Along with the violence came more antiwar movements (Firm 128). There were not only antiwar movements but also political, environmental, religious, and more. To organize together, hippies would use word of mouth, letters, and posters to get a large movement or rally together for a specific cause that they believed in (Chepesiuk 2).

Straying away from the mainstream can be difficult unless there is a group of people with a common interest that brings them together. The 1960s was a time of not only prominent mainstream culture but also counterculture. The mainstream culture was notably defined by four different concepts that connected white middle and upper class Americans: Patriotism, believing in the institution of marriage, the American dream, and the idea that conformity kept society ordered. In contrast, the counterculture of the time went against all of these ideals, believing in rejecting traditional American society by dropping out and forming communes, taking part in free love, and the rebellion against conformity and materialism. What made the community of hippies, or people who rejected the mainstream and followed the ideas of the counterculture, so strong was the common thread that brought them together. This common interest was psychedelic drugs, like LSD,

In his book titled The Making of a Counterculture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, historian Theodore Roszak described a “counterculture” as typically involving disapproval or an attempted dismissal of those institutions which presently hold some level of dominance, while simultaneously having hope for an improved life in a new society, in terms of thinking and being. There has been some level of debate, discussing whether or not the hippie movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s matched this definition. Was the movement solely a product of the hippie’s clustered university lifestyle, where common experimentation with drugs as well as political activism served as their own sources of rebellion? This notion was argued by anthropologist William L. Partridge, in his case study titled The Hippie Ghetto: The Natural History of a Subculture.

Although SDS had a number of issues they were passionate about in the mid-to-late 1960s, their most crucial point of discussion revolved around the Vietnam War. It could be argued that the advent of the war was one of the factors that contributed to the increasing militancy of the group, the group eventually dissolving into multiple factions including the Weathermen. Similarly, the hippie counterculture eventually developed a strong anti-war sentiment regarding the American intervention in Vietnam. However, the doctrine of love and pacifism resulted in the hippies never developing militant behaviors in the way that the members of SDS did. This emphasis on non-violence, as the 60s and 70s went on, became an increasingly valuable point in which the hippies diverged from other groups that shared similar foundational philosophies given that the growing unrest in America resulted in, for many groups including SDS, more violent

Fifty-seven years ago the Hippie; “a young person who reject the mores of established society and advocates a non-violent ethnic” made a tremendous amount of differences in the lives around them and within themselves. They brought change worldwide and stood risen for their beliefs - stood risen to the point whereby many suggest that the defiance of the hippie generation has reincarnated into the lives of the youth today, still rising. Their ability to openly resist against the government, and society itself left the world and mostly their elders in awe. In relation with the youth of today – it in is in a crowd of thousands when you

school. The hippies started to grow out their hair, wear colorful clothes, jewelry, headband and excertatra. They were taking advantage of the pill. They don't think sex meant having children, so it became for normal. Philosophy encouraged the hippies to explore their sexuality. Sex became open for them so they didn't care who knew, they just started to have a different type of sex. Hippies express themselves through sex and protest. Also listen to music not for entertainment, but for a form of emotion  and to pass a messages. The drug hippie was using were LSD and marijuana for experience and freedom. The hippie movement affected quantities of things like  the civil right movement, that started to give women the right to vote just like the men. The hippie style started to develop popular that people commence to buy clothes like them. Because of the hippie, people started to express them self and not be ashamed of what they

Love not war. Peaceful protesting against the Vietnam War. Tie dye and vegetarian diets. Living life to the fullest and changing your lifestyle to help the environment. Hippies in the 1960s made a very big impact on the government and society.

All of which caused weariness to (middle-class) hippies; who were anticipating war, planning their next high, and wondering where they stood after the passage of the civil rights act. In general, the second wave dealt with the humbleness of counterculture youth and their community. On the one hand, the vision of a growing community, with their freedoms fortified with equal rights; and on the other; a vision of nuclear war and a world without life or work. “Of all the phenomenon of the Sixties few were widely feared and loathed by mainstream America than the counter culture (Morgan; 169). Although, the decade of the sixties was economically prosperous for the U.S., in its later years it became senselessly vain for counterculture youth, and also the government whose hands were tied with hippie demonstrations and those of the communist. The Vietnam War and the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. dampened the spirit of all America, not just the

The sixties were a time when Americans experimented with individual freedom, but also contributed to making America better with a new interpretation of social responsibility. Adolescent protesters, named hippies for their abstract ways of rebellion, protested for an improved Democratic society. These activists claimed that the human degradation, or as they called it “racial bigotry”, in the South compelled most of them to rebel; along with the enclosing fact of the Cold war, symbolized by the presence of the nuclear bomb, which created an underlying fear of “dying at anytime”. Although an unconventional way of protesting, these activists sought attention from powerful political figures by men growing their hair out, both men and women wearing

The 1960s Hippie movement emerged out of a collective feel for a different way of life. Two World Wars in the span of thirty years, together with the Vietnam War, left individuals seeking change. Emerged as a youth movement it drew its inspiration from similar past movements such as the German Wandervogel (migratory bird) and the beat generation. Hippies, a term first coined in 1965, placed their focus on the happiness of individuals. Fed up with being told how to live by societal standards, dissatisfied with what their parents had build up for them, and the ongoing violence, hippies sought to live a life of freedom, love, free expression, and peace.

By 1968, there were massive anti-Vietnam war marches, protests, sit-ins and student strikes in major cities and on college and university campuses across the nation. There wasn't really a in between when choosing a side, you either understood the reasoning and became a hippie or you just thought being a hippie is something you truly cannot be apart of, this from a point of view from a conservative. In fact, people who were outside the movement, mostly members of the white middle and upper middle class supported this development. “Most people who joined the counterculture came from families who had money; the hippies were not members of minority groups who suffered from discrimination” (Encyclopedia) . The reaction from the conservatives to the counterculture was tentative. They didn't really do much other than the fact of judging them in general. From pointing out the unnecessary drug abuse to disfavoring the wardrobe and long hair. They sort of predicted things would turn back the way it was before, to a return of family and values. The hippie movement was a direct effect on the laws that were created to prevent drug use that still exist today. The hippie movement also affected the Civil Rights Movement, which eventually resulted in several laws giving African Americans and women the same rights and white men, including the equal rights to vote and to an

The hippie movement born in San Francisco in the 1960s. Greed and selfishness were not accepted by the young people. Although, the music scene and the hippies’ values attracted a large number of people. The Farm was an important community. They sharing all of their resources. People worked hard on it, contrary to the prejudice from mainstream society. “Farmies” were able to buy extra supplies by occasionally jobs. In the mid-70s the hippie communes did not survive as a commune and progressed in alternative

The stereotypical hippie that most people think of: blue jeans, flower crowns, drugs, peace and love. In the 1960s, thousands of mostly white, middle-class young people "dropped out" of mainstream society to live in hippie communities throughout the U.S(1946-1971: Postwar and Civil Rights Era). Among the youth of the ‘60s (18-mid-twenty-year old’s) made tension against the government and the country. Disapproval from many about the war in Vietnam and the draft that sent hundreds of thousands of 18 and 19-year-old men into battle was growing. Was it successful enough, not exactly, but it did change the view of our society in a way no one realized.