USHAP 2016-17: The Counterculture Movement in the 1960s

Sunday, May 7, 2017

The Counterculture Movement in the 1960s

Naomi Zimmermann

The Counterculture of the 1960s

The counterculture is one of the more intriguing and well-known topics about recent US history that people know about. The term “hippie” is tossed around lightly to denote someone who is free spirited and doesn’t conform to the social norms of dressing or behaving. In a century defined by the breakdown of norms and different civil rights movements, the counterculture was a noteworthy social movement that called for disregarding social norms and living life as you please. It concurred and intermingled with the women’s rights movement, which started after Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963.

The counterculture movement signified a shift to left wing politics for some. College students were particularly involved in the antiwar and civil rights movement, creating a more politically active youth. A group of liberal youth met in Port Huron, Michigan and issued the Port Huron Statement, which represented student protester sentiment. They rejected consumer culture and criticized the gap between the rich and poor as well as rejecting elitists in power. Additionally, they criticized institutions like political parties, corporations, unions, and the military-industrial complex. The statement provided a new vision of social change and a new age in which the government served the people by creating politics in favor of all of them.

In 1964, the Free Speech movement mushroomed at UC Berkeley when the administration tried to censor the students’ political involvements. They used popular civil rights movements tactics, like sit-ins and taking over buildings, which were adopted by several other movements at the time, including the antiwar movement.

Hippies, along with the New Left, made up the counterculture. They also were constituted of mostly middle class white citizens, but didn’t possess the same political drive that members of the New Left. Most easily recognizable by their style of clothing, which usually constituted of tie dye and an eclectic mix of flowy, bohemian prints, and their long hair in which they often wore flowery headbands, the hippies were free spirits that rejected social norms. They were also defined by sexual promiscuity and fluidity in a time when America’s sexual values were changing and becoming looser. Drugs, especially psychedelic ones like LSD, and marijuana, were also used in higher proportions among hippie members. Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco and the East Village in NY were both vocal locations for the hippie movement.