The 1960s and 1970s were a significant time period in the history of the United States of America. The country faced many domestic social issues as well as issues and conflicts with foreign countries. Some issues included poverty, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. The United States was involved in dangerous issues that did not directly affect them otherwise. Even at home in the states, discrimination was everywhere. These events were the root of the beginning of the hippie era. The hippies were against violence and normalcy in society. Most hippies were middle class white young adults, few were adults, and some were immigrants. Some people thought the hippies were just the new generations’ typical phase of teenage rebellion, …show more content…
The songs and lyrics were inspiring and had a huge impact on the movement. Artists such as The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix had songs mainly composed of lyrics that promoted peace. Hippies used their iconic music as a way to get their message out to the people. For instance, the song “Blackbird” by The Beatles discussed the controversial matters of the civil rights movement. The music spoke the truth, impacted listeners, and encouraged listeners to connect and think about the underlying meanings of the songs. The Woodstock Festival in 1969 was the most historical concert of the hippie movement. It influenced people who experienced it first hand, and those who merely heard about it. The hippies were also defined by their unique and unconventional fashion and appearances. Hippies often had long hair, and wore beads and loose, flowy clothing. Theywere often dirty looking or unwashed. Men had long hair and untamed beards to protest the conformity of the previous generation, the typical crew cuts. Some men had earrings. The women wore loose-fitting, draped clothing. Some wore oversized men’s’ shirts and
The 1960’s presented Hippies with the chance to express their beliefs and attitudes in a number of diverse
Around the same time within the late 1960’s, a new hippie movement was forming, which was often described as a counterculture.
Domestic issues overtook the United States in the 1970s. First and foremost, it seemed everyone was fighting for cause, the long-drawn battles seemed to stall. Conservative activists were concerned that the Equal Rights Amendment would blur traditional gender roles and prolonged the discrimination against women. After fighting and campaigning for years, feminists became disheartened about their plight. Legalization of abortion upset numerous Americans, so much so, that we are still fighting about it 45 years later.
The 1970s were a time of confusion and revolution in the United States. Integration finally prevailed in the public school system, with the major incident being in Little Rock, Arkansas. The United States went through an extreme energy crisis in the 1970s. Both Welfare and Social Security went through drastic reform policies throughout the decade. In addition, the U.S. economy fluctuated throughout the decade creating both good and bad times for many, as inflation rates hit an all-time high. The 1970s was an extremely influential decade in America's history, and one that helped to shape following decades.
It is readily apparent that a willingness to enter into relationships with other people characterizes the respondents. Intellectual concerns, politics, drugs, and sexual permissiveness received much less support. Hippie counterculture, while affirming, albeit implicitly, the benefits of an industrial society, has no place either in its normative structure or in its social structure for their production. The hippie movement is countercultural rather than political. (Westhues) This movement wasn’t just in opposition to the war. It was a lifestyle that the Hippies started. It was a culture and a way to live kind of like a community. The drastic social change led by the Hippies provided for a very interesting time during the 1960s.
There has been a great change since the 1960’s era with so much protest of being unfair to a certain race. Until the Vietnam war where more Americans were focused on protesting the war than on each other. Females also began to demand more rights for women during these years and social change in music was introduced differently than that of today. Politics were very violent during the 1960’s where famous leaders such as John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. People also dress different during the 1960’s than they do today with long hair in which they called themselves Hippies and wore unusual strange clothing in different fashions. With all these events happening in the 1960’s I believe that America was trying to find a way out from the hate and rejection to certain events that was taking place in order to shape America the way it should be for everyone.
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 whole hippie culture all together was totally against social norms, what society wanted to see, how everyone else lived, and what they believed in. The hippie culture’s main moto was “make love, not war”. They were strongly against war and the Vietnam War, which was going on during the same time the hippie culture was popular. They thought that everyone should have acceptance of the universe. They wanted to see change in the world, global
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
It is believed that the Hippie movement began in San Francisco, California but it quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada as well as in Europe and other parts of the world. The individuals involved in the hippie movement were from a wide range of different backgrounds. Many of them parted with their families and the places that they were raised to follow their own paths. Many of these individuals experimented with LSD and other drugs such as marijuana. Of all the contributions that this counter culture made to the United States, the music produced during this period was arguably the most influential. Musical icons such as Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan made their claim to fame in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper will consider three popular artist and
‘The hippie movement germinated in San Francisco, with the Vietnam War at its core. The movement eventually spread to the East Coast as well, centralized in New York's East Village in addition to the Haight-Asbury district of San Francisco and Sunset Strip of Los Angeles” (Buchholz 858). Many hippies were angry over the conformist lifestyle that Americans were living in, and wanted to live how they wanted to live not how their employer or television wanted them to live. Hippies also took a political
During the early 1960s the hippies began a movement for the youth in San Francisco; it was a movement that developed very rapidly around the world. It consisted of a group of people who had an opposition against the political and social standards. This group of people chose to favor peace, love and freedom as their way of living. The hippies had their own standards of living, they rejected institutions and were always criticizing the value of the middle class. Many of them were usually all about the planet and vegetarians, they also promoted the use of mind blowing drugs. The hippies created their own communities, listen to heavy rock, embraced sexual revolution, and used drugs to adventure different stages of consciousness.
The “hippies” of the 1960s had many effects on the American society. The visual appearance and lifestyle of the hippies were in sharp contrast to the conservative nature of the older generation, which defined them as a counterculture. The hippie lifestyle was based on free love, rock music, shared property, and drug experimentation. They introduced a new perspective on drugs, freedom of expression, appearance, music, attitudes toward work, and held a much more liberal political view than mainstream society.
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.
Hippies. Who are they? Why are they called hippies? Where did they even come from? History has taught us that hippies are protestors, educators, lovers and friends of the world.