The roots of the monumental counter-culture movement extend back as far as 1963, when President Kennedy’s assassination first began to alienate American youth from the government. After Kennedy was murdered, the ideas of conspiracy and government cover-ups gripped America. As mentioned before, the media had a great deal of power during this time, partially because Americans had never before been able to receive so much information so readily, and partially because the post-World War II climate was ripe with fear. The basis of this fear was communism, and the media would emphasize the growing strength of the enemy everyday via television, newspapers, and the radio. As symbols of non-violence, hippies would gain ground as fear of large-scale participation in Vietnam became more prominent in the United States.
In 1965, the term “Hippie” was first used by Michel Fallon, a writer in San Francisco. San Francisco itself became known as the heart of the hippie movement, especially the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. While hippies are often mentioned in today’s media, on television shows, or even featured as Halloween costumes, much of who hippies really were and what hippies stood for has been lost to history.
The origins of hippies rest in the Beatniks of earlier eras, mainly the 1950s. Beatniks were best known for being the first group to be associated with marijuana, anti-materialism, openness to African-American culture, and intentional counter-culture. As for hippies, the common recruit for the movement was a white young adult (between the ages of 15 and 25).While the common stereotype that hippies did drugs and were sexually promiscuous is not completely untrue, and has undeniably been blown far out of proportion, there is a historical significance to the behavior. It is important to consider when this group was born, raised during the extremely conservative 1950s, a time when people sought normality and structured peacefulness. A radical backlash is more than expected, and given the fodder of the Vietnam War, the conditions were perfect for creating the sweeping social movement that the hippies turned out to be.
In rebellion against the older generation’s rules, hippies would embrace sexual freedom, experiment with mind-altering drugs, and practice many habits which violated traditional social norms. Lifestyle choices that seem trivial now, such as vegetarianism and eco-friendly practices first gained followings with the hippie movement. Hippies opposed middle-class views of material goods, opposed any sort of dogma, whether that be political or religious, and chose a more nondescript life of personal betterment and harmony. Since much of the hippie movement centered on seeking meaning and value in intangible ideas, a few scholars describe the counterculture as a new form of religion.
Hippies would be accountable for three major events throughout the Vietnam War. The first of the events most related to hippies is the Summer of Love, which took place in 1967. As the name suggests, this was a series of gatherings that spread over the summer of 1967. Beginning with the Monterey Pop Festival, which ran over the weekend of June 16th to 18th, hippies would attract their first national recognition in the TIME magazine cover story, “The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture.” An estimated 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco during the Summer of Love, and the media was not far behind them. This constant media storm, which placed an overemphasis on drug use, also created many misgivings about hippie culture, often revolving around loose morals and laziness, would later propel societal panic in the late 1960s.
The second infamous hippie gathering was the building of People’s Park in April 1969. In Berkeley, California, a piece of land had been cleared for later building, but instead was left alone until it was overgrown and polluted. Hippies, along with Berkeley citizens, came together to plant gardens and create landscaping on the empty plot. In reaction to the event, Governor Ronald Reagan sent the United States National Guard to inhabit the city for two full weeks. The confrontation gave rise to the popular notion of “Flower Power”, as hippies acted out against the National Guard to plant flowers in different locals throughout Berkeley.
The final, and most well-known of all the hippie gatherings, is known simply as Woodstock. Beginning in August 1969, over 500,000 hippies came to listen to musicians who personified their counterculture movement. While this congregation had no lasting political effect, it emphatically displayed to mainstream America just how many people embraced the counterculture. No one had expected such a massive crowd, not even those who had originally organized the event. What began as a profit-raising concert soon changed to free admission, given that the organizers had neither nearly enough tickets to sell, nor the man power to try to manage and collect payment from the masses. While much of hippie culture is now an accepted part of mainstream culture, after the end of the Vietnam War, hippies would be a target of much ridicule.
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