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Social anthropologist Jentri Anders has observed that a number of freedoms were endorsed within a countercultural community which she lived in and studied: "freedom to explore one’s potential, freedom to create one’s Self, freedom of personal expression, freedom from scheduling, freedom from rigidly defined roles and hierarchical statuses…" Additionally, Anders believed these people wished to modify children's education so that it didn't discourage "aesthetic sense, love of nature, passion for music, desire for reflection, or strongly marked independence…"[4]
The Cold War (between communism and capitalism) involved espionage on a global scale[5], along with illegal political and military intervention by both sides in the internal affairs of lesser nations (see Timeline of events in the Cold War). Poor outcomes from some of these activities set the stage for disillusionment with, and distrust of, post-war governments[6]. Examples included harsh Soviet responses to popular anti-communist uprisings, such as the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring in 1968, as well as the botched U.S. Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. In the U.S., President Dwight D. Eisenhower's initial deception[7][8] over the nature of the 1960 U-2 incident resulted in the government being caught in a blatant lie at the highest levels, and set the stage for growing distrust of authority among many who came of age during the period.[9][10]
Underwater Atomic Test "Baker", Bikini Atoll, Pacific Ocean, 1946
Internal political disagreements concerning treaty obligations in Southeast Asia (SEATO), especially in Vietnam, and debate as to how other communistinsurgencies should be handled, also created dissent within the establishment.[13][14][15]
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and doubts as to the validity of the official government findings regarding this event, led to further diminished trust in government, especially among young people[16] (see also: Warren Commission).
Three primary historical factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from authority-opposition movements of previous eras.
First, the post-war "baby boom"[17] constituted an unprecedented number of young, affluent, and potentially disaffected people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of American society, on all levels. Second, the use of mind-altering substances, such as marijuana and LSD, among the young resulted in an explosion of creative and non-traditional thought[18]. Finally, a unique confluence of critical events and issues served as an intellectual catalyst for this large, free-thinking population of young people.
Critical sociological issues fueled the growth of the larger counterculture movement. At the forefront was a need to resolve key Constitutionalcivil rights illegalities, especially ongoing racial segregation and lack of voting rights among Southern blacks.
Free Speech activist Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall, UC Berkely, 1966
On college and university campuses, student activists fought for the right to exercise basic Constitutional rights, especially freedom of speech and freedom of assembly[19].
Many counterculture activists became newly aware of the ongoing plight of the nation's poor, and community organizers fought for the funding of anti-poverty programs, particularly within inner city areas[20][21]. >.
Industrial Pollution, known and recognized as a serious threat to health, is finally regulated by Richard Nixon through the creation of the EPA.
Environmentalism grew from of a greater understanding of the damage caused by industrialization, resultant pollution, and the misguided use of chemicals such as pesticides in well-meaning efforts to improve the quality of life. Authors such as Rachel Carson played key roles in developing a new awareness of the fragility of planet earth, despite resistance from elements of the establishment[22]
The need to address minority rights of women, gays, the handicapped, and a plethora of other neglected constituencies within the larger population came to the forefront as an increasing number of primarily younger people broke free from the constraints of 1950s orthodoxy in a desire to create a more inclusive and tolerant social landscape[23].
The availability of new and effective forms of birth control was a key underpinning of the sexual revolution. The notion of “recreational sex” without the threat of unwanted pregnancy radically changed the social dynamic and permitted both women and men much greater freedom in the selection of sexual lifestyles outside the confines of traditional marriage.[24] As a consequence of the shift in lifestyle choices, the ratio of children born out of wedlock rose from 5% and 25% for whites and African-Americans respectively in the early 1960s, to 25% and 66% by the 1990s.[25]
For those born after WWII, the role of television as a source of entertainment and information, as well as the attendant massive expansion of consumerism afforded by post-war affluence and encouraged by TV advertising, were critical components in youthful disillusionment and the formulation of new social behaviors. Near-real-time TV news coverage of the Vietnam War brought bloody conflict into the living rooms of millions of Americans for the first time.
The breakdown of enforcement of the Hays Code concerning motion picture production (government censorship on moral grounds), heralded a new era of foreign/art-house, pornographic, and mainstream film production, distribution, and exhibition, resulting in a complete reformation of the western film industry. Likewise, dozens of new filmmakers across many genres brought previously prohibited subject matter to the silver screen for the first time, even as "Hollywood" continued to be considered part of the establishment by elements of the counterculture.
Previously disregarded FM Radio became a focal point for both music and news for the counterculture generation[26].
Communes, collectives, and intentional communities regained popularity during this era. Early communities, such as the Hog Farm, were established by hippies as straightforward agrarian attempts to return to the land and live free of interference from outside influences. As the era progressed, many people established and populated new communities in response to not only disillusionment with the establishment, but also dissatisfaction with certain elements of the counterculture itself. Some of these self-sustaining communities have been credited with the birth and propagation of the green movement. (see also: recycling)
Views on organized religion shifted radically during the era. In 1957, 69% of Americans polled by Gallup said religion was increasing in influence. By the late 1960s, polls indicated less than 20% still held that belief. [27]
The often violent confrontations between college students (and other activists) and law enforcement became a hallmark of the era. Many younger people began to show deep distrust of police, and terms such as “fuzz” and “pig” as derogatory euphemisms for police became part of the counterculture lexicon. This distrust was based not only on fear of police brutality during political protests, but also on generalized police corruption--especially police manufacture of false evidence, and outright entrapment, in drug cases. The social tension between the counterculture and law enforcement reached the breaking point in many notable cases: the Columbia University protests of 1968 in New York City, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the arrest and imprisonment of John Sinclair in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (see also: Kent State shootings.)
The Vietnam War, and the protracted national divide between supporters and opponents of the war, were arguably the most important factors contributing to the rise of the larger counterculture movement. The widely-accepted assertion that anti-war opinion was predominantly among the young is a myth[28][29]. Nevertheless, enormous war protests consisting of thousands of mostly younger people in every major American city effectively united the millions of Americans against the war, and against the war policy that prevailed under five congresses and during two presidential administrations.
The era essentially commenced in earnest with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It ended with the termination of U.S. combat military involvement in the communist insurgencies of Southeast Asia and the end of the military draft in 1973, and ultimately with the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in August, 1974.
Many key movements were born of, or were advanced within, the counterculture of the 1960s. Each movement is relevant to the larger era. The most important stand alone, irrespective of the larger counterculture[30].
The Civil Rights Movement, a key element of the larger Counterculture movement, involved the fight for equal rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution to all American citizens, rights which many southern states illegally denied the descendents of slaves of African origin following emancipation.
In one view, the 1960s counterculture largely originated on college campuses. The 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, which had its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the American South, was one early example. At Berkeley a socially privileged group of students began to identify themselves as having interests as a class that were at odds with the interests and practices of the University and its corporate sponsors. However, other rebellious young people who had never been college students also contributed to counterculture development. The beatnik café and bar scene was a tributary stream. This was the intellectual forefront of the larger counterculture movement[31].
New Left
Saul Alinsky off the cover of Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy by Sanford D. Horwitt.
The New Left is a term used in different countries to describe left-wing movements that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. They differed from earlier leftist movements that had been more oriented towards labour activism, and instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S. "New Left" is associated with college campus mass protest movements and radical leftist movements. The British "New Left" was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of "Old Left" parties in the post-World War II period. The movements began to wind down in the 1970s, when activists either committed themselves to party projects, developed social justice organizations, moved into identity politics or alternative lifestyles or became politically inactive.
Opposition to the Vietnam War began in 1964 on United States college campuses. Student activism became a dominant theme among the baby boomers, growing to include many Americans. Exemptions and deferments for the middle and upper classes resulted in the induction of a disproportionate number of poor, working-class, and minority registrants. Countercultural works such as MacBird by Barbara Garson encouraged a spirit of non-conformism and anti-establishmentarianism. By 1968, a majority of Americans opposed the war.[32]
LSD and other psychedelics
BNDD agents Don Strange (right) and Howard Safir (left) arrest Leary in 1972
Vorlage:SeealsoKen Kesey and his Merry Pranksters helped shape the developing character of the 1960s counterculture when they embarked on a cross-country voyage during the summer of 1964 in a psychedelic school bus named "Furthur." Beginning in 1959, Kesey had volunteered as a research subject for medical trials financed by the CIA's MK ULTRA project. These trials tested the effects of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and other psychedelic drugs. After the medical trials, Kesey continued experimenting on his own, and involved many close friends; collectively they became known as "The Merry Pranksters." The Pranksters visited Harvard LSD proponent Timothy Leary at his Millbrook, New York retreat, and experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs, primarily as a means for internal reflection and personal growth, became a constant during the Prankster trip. The Pranksters created a direct link between the 1950s Beat Generation and the 1960s psychedelic scene; the bus was driven by Beat icon Neal Cassady, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was onboard for a time, and they dropped in on Cassady's friend, Beat author Jack Kerouac — though Kerouac declined participation in the Prankster scene. After the Pranksters returned to California, they popularized the use of LSD at so-called "Acid Tests", which initially were held at Kesey's home in La Honda, California, and then at many other West Coast venues. Experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs became a major component of 1960s counterculture, influencing philosophy, art, music and styles of dress.
After the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco organized by artist Michael Bowen, the media's attention on the counterculture was fully activated.[33]. In 1967 Scott McKenzie's rendition of the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" brought as many as 100,000 young people from all over the world to celebrate San Francisco's "Summer of Love." While the song had originally been written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas to promote the June, 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it became an instant hit worldwide (#4 in the United States, #1 in Europe) and quickly transcended its original purpose. San Francisco's flower children, also called "hippies" by local newspaper columnist Herb Caen, adopted new styles of dress, experimented with psychedelic drugs, lived communally and developed a vibrant music scene. When people returned home from "The Summer of Love" these styles and behaviors spread quickly from San Francisco and Berkeley to all major U.S. and Canadian cities and European capitals. A counterculture movement gained momentum in which the younger generation began to define itself as a class that aimed to create a new kind of society. Some hippies formed communes to live as far outside of the established system as possible. This aspect of the counterculture rejected active political engagement with the mainstream and, following the dictate of Timothy Leary to "turn on, tune in, and drop out", hoped to change society by dropping out of it. Looking back on his own life (as a Harvard professor) prior to 1960, Leary interpreted it to have been that of "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis .... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots."
As members of the hippie movement grew older and moderated their lives and their views, and especially after all US involvement in the Vietnam War ground to a halt in the mid 1970s, the counterculture was largely absorbed by the mainstream, leaving a lasting impact on philosophy, morality, music, art, lifestyle and fashion.
Sexual revolution
Beginning in San Francisco in the mid 1960s, a new culture of "free love" arose, with millions of young people embracing the hippie ethos and preaching the power of love and the beauty of sex as a natural part of ordinary life. By the start of the 1970s it was acceptable for colleges to allow co-educational housing where male and female students mingled freely. This aspect of the counterculture continues to impact modern society.
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
In Europe
The counterculture movement took hold in Western Europe, with London, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin rivaling San Francisco and New York as counterculture centers. One manifestation of this was the general strike that took place in Paris in May 1968, which nearly toppled the French government. Another was the German student movement of the 1960s.
In Central Europe, young people adopted the song "San Francisco" as an anthem for freedom, and it was widely played during Czechoslovakia's 1968 "Prague Spring", a premature attempt to break away from Soviet repression. In reaction to Israel's Six-Day-War, the Kremlin decided to force the Jewish minorities in all Soviet-dominated states to emigrate. This resulted in heavy riots in Warsaw, Poland and several other major cities.
As the newly emergent youth class began to criticize the established social order, new theories about cultural and personal identity began to spread, and traditional non-Western ideas — particularly with regard to religion, social organization and spiritual enlightenment — were more frequently embraced.
In Mexico
Vorlage:Seealso
In Mexico, rock music was tied into the youth revolt of the 1960s. Cities such as Mexico City, as well as northern cities such as Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez, and Tijuana, were exposed to American music. Many Mexican rock stars became involved in the counterculture. The three-day Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro, held in 1971, was organized in the valley of Avándaro near the city of Toluca, a town neighboring Mexico City, and became known as "The Mexican Woodstock". Nudity, drug use, and the presence of the American flag scandalized conservative Mexican society to such an extent that the government clamped down on rock and roll performances for the rest of the decade. The festival, marketed as proof of Mexico's modernization, was never expected to attract the masses it did, and the government had to evacuate stranded attendees en masse at the end. This occurred during the era of PresidentLuis Echeverría, an extremely repressive era in Mexican history. Anything that could possibly be connected to the counterculture or student protests was prohibited from being broadcast on public airwaves, with the government fearing a repeat of the student protests of 1968. Few bands survived the prohibition; though the ones that did, like Three Souls in My Mind (now El Tri), remained popular due in part to their adoption of Spanish for their lyrics, but mostly as a result of a dedicated underground following. While Mexican rock groups were eventually able to perform publicly by the mid-1980s, the ban prohibiting tours of Mexico by foreign acts lasted until 1991.
The role of women as full-time homemakers in industrial society was challenged in 1963, when American feminist Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, giving momentum to the women's movement and influencing the second wave of feminism.
Alternative media
Underground newspapers sprang up in most cities and college towns, serving to define and communicate the range of phenomena that defined the counterculture: radical political opposition to "The Establishment", colorful experimental (and often explicitly drug-influenced) approaches to art, music and cinema, and uninhibited indulgence in sex and drugs as a symbol of freedom. The papers also often included comic strips, from which the underground comix were an outgrowth.
Music
Vorlage:Seealso
During the early 1960s, Britain's new wave of musicians gained popularity and fame in the United States. Artists such as the Beatles paved the way for their compatriots to enter the US market [34]. The Beatles themselves were heavily influenced by American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan who was a lyrical inspiration as well as their introduction to soft drugs [35]. Dylan’s early career as a protest singer had been inspired by the similar role taken by Pete Seeger [36] and his hero Woody Guthrie [37]. Bands like Peter, Paul and Mary took the songs of the young Dylan to a new audience and public recognition [38].
The music of the 1960s moved towards an electric, psychedelic version of rock. Thanks largely to Bob Dylan’s famous decision to play an electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival [39]. The newly popularized electric sound of rock was then built upon and molded into psychedelic rock by artists like Texans the 13th Floor Elevators [40] and British bands Pink Floyd and the Beatles [41]. The Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds also paved the way for latter hippie acts with Brian Wilson’s writing interpreted as a “plea for love and understanding” [42].
The Beatles went on to become the most prominent commercial exponents of the "psychedelic revolution" (e.g., Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) in the late 1960s [43]. Meanwhile in the United States, bands that exemplified the counterculture were becoming huge commercial, mainstream successes. These included The Mamas & the Papas (If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears), Big Brother and the Holding Company (Cheap Thrills), Jimi Hendrix (Are You Experienced?), Jefferson Airplane (Surrealistic Pillow), The Doors (The Doors) and Sly and the Family Stone (Stand!)[44]. Bands such as The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, and New York's Blues Project did not achieve such commercial success but are still considered key to the counterculture movement.
While the hippie scene was born in California [45], an edgier scene emerged in New York City [46] that put more emphasis on avant-garde and art music. Bands such as The Velvet Underground came out of this underground music scene, predominantly centered at Andy Warhol's legendary The Factory. Members of the band were also part of Andy Warhol's social clique called Warhol Superstar. Much of the Velvet Underground's lyrics were considered too risque for the era since they discussed The Factory's embrace of transgenders and homosexuality as well as drug use. [47].
Detroit, Michigan's MC5 (Motor City 5) also came out of the underground rock music scene of the late 1960s. They introduced a more aggressive evolution of garage rock which was often fused with sociopolitical and countercultural lyrics of the era, such as in the songs "Motor City Is Burning" (a John Lee Hooker cover adapting the story of the Detroit Race Riot (1943) to the Detroit Insurrection of 1967), and "The American Ruse" (which discusses U.S. police brutality as well as pollution, prison, materialism and rebellion). They had ties to radical leftist organizations such as Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and John Sinclair's White Panther Party (composed of white American socialists seeking to assist African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement) [48]. MC5 performed a lengthy set before the 1968 Democratic Convention held at International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois where an infamous riot subsequently broke out between police and students protesting the recent assassination of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnam War [49]. MC5, as well as The Stooges and the aforementioned Velvet Underground, have now been seen as among the most influential bands in rock music history and developed the protopunk sound that would lead to punk rock in the late 1970s [50].
The counter culture was the era of the festival. The Monterey Festival which launched Jimi Hendrix’s career in America was the first of these [51]. The phenomenon of the festival was not unique to America, with Britain’s Isle of Wight Festival drawing big names such as Bob Dylan [52]. Perhaps the most important and famous of these was the Woodstock festival which became a symbol of the hippie movement [53]. However the era came to an abrupt end with the infamous Altamont free concert held by the Rolling Stones in which heavy handed security from the Hells angels resulted in the stabbing of an audience member as the show descended into chaos [54].
As the psychedelic revolution progressed, lyrics grew more complex (such as Jefferson Airplane’s "White Rabbit" [55]) and long playing albums enabled artists to make more in-depth statements than could be made in a single song (such as the Mothers of Invention’s satirical Freak Out![56]). Even rules governing single songs were stretched--singles lasting longer than three minutes emerged for the first time (Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" was the first of these [57]).
The 1960s saw the protest song gain a sense of political self importance, with Country Joe & the Fish’s "I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag" epitomizing the anti-war anthem that was so key [58].
Film
The Counterculture Revolution was effected by cinema. Films like Bonnie and Clyde stuck a chord with the youth as “the alienation of the young in the 1960s was comparable to the director's image of the 1930s.”[59]. Films of this time also focused on the changes happening in the world. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969) focused on the counterculture of the time [60]. Medium Cool portrayed the 1968 Democratic Convention alongside the 1968 Chicago Riots which has led to it being labeled as “a fusion of cinema-vérité and political radicalism” [61]. The movie studios' only serious attempt to cash in on the hippie trend was in 1968's Psych-Out[62] which is in stark contrast to Alice's Restaurant which portrayed the generation as “doomed” [63]. The era ended with 1970's Woodstock, a documentary of the festival of the same name, which was a moderate commercial success [64].
Environmentalism
Counterculture environmentalists were quick to grasp the early (i.e., 1970s) analyses of the reality and the import of the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction. More broadly they saw that the dilemmas of energy derivation would have implications for geo-politics, lifestyle, environment, and other dimensions of modern life.
Technology
In his 1986 essay From Satori to Silicon Valley[65], cultural historian Theodore Roszak pointed out that Apple Computer emerged from within the West Coast counterculture. Roszak outlines the Apple computer's development, and the evolution of 'the two Steves' (Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the Apple's developers) into businessmen. Like them, many early computing and networking pioneers — after discovering LSD and roaming the campuses of UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT in the late '60s and early '70s — would emerge from this caste of social "misfits" to shape the modern world.
Legacy
The legacy of the Counterculture is still actively contested in debates that are sometimes framed, in the U.S., in terms of a "culture war." Jay Walljasper, a commentator and the editor of Utne Reader - though not himself from the so-called '60s Generation, and having grown up in American-Heartland farming country — has written, "From the great gyrations of the counterculture would come a movement dedicated to the greening of America. While many once-ardent advocates of radical ideas now live in the suburbs and vote Republican, others have held fast to the dream of creating a new kind of American society and they've been joined by fresh streams of younger idealists."
Boxing Champion & Conscientious Objector Muhammad Ali
This list includes selected notable persons who exemplify primary elements of the larger anti-establishment movement in the U.S. The operative leaders of very well-established and very widely-supported legal movements (such as Civil Rights) are found under those subject headings.
(Individuals noted as "Artists" are notable creators in multiple media. Specific arts are not noted here.)
↑Terry H. Anderson: The Movement and the Sixties. Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-510457-9.
↑Hirsch, E.D. (1993). The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-65597-8. p 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. in the 1960s and affected Europe before fading in the 1970s...fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest."
↑"Rockin' At the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock," Mary Works Covington, 2005.
