1960's Counterculture

• The "Woodstock Music & Art Fair" was a music festival that attracted around half a million concert goers in August of 1969.
• 32 musical acts performed over a four day slot (although it was only intended to be 3 days), and included famous names such as Janis Joplin, The Who, Joan Baez, and The Grateful Dead.
• "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" are probably the 3 best words to sum up the festival, with just maybe an extra dash of nudity.
• The festival was presumably one of the biggest symbols of the Counterculture at that time, because it let regular middle class young people experience a taste of "communal life."

Counter-culture concepts to explore:

1. Anti-war Movement

2. Sexual Revolution

3. Music

4. Hippies/Counter-culture lifestyle

5. Environmentalism

Environmentalism

• Grew from an understanding of the ongoing damage caused by industrialization, pollution, and use of harmful chemicals like pesticides
• Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) - about the impact of the pesticide DDT on the food chain
• The Endangered Animal Act (1964) - passed to protect species that were almost extinct
• Hippies were often vegetarian and believed in eco-friendly environmental practices

Student Protests

Anti-war Movement

• After the Tet Offensive, disillusionment among the American people spread rapidly, triggering an extreme period of protests.
• Protests and marches organized mostly by peace activists, leftist scholars, and students.
• U.S. draft lottery caused many young men to flee and evade conscription

SDS-Students for a Democratic Society

• Democratic National Convention (1968) protests in nearby parks turned into violent "police riots"
• Kent State University demonstrations (May 1970) involved violence when National Guard troops shot and killed four students who were demonstrating against U.S. involvement in Cambodia.
• A growing number of young people who rejected the government’s authority began to embrace the counterculture and stray away from the norm.

• 1962 Published their manifesto
• meet in Ann Arbor, MI
• called the Port Huron Statement

“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”

• To achieve universal disarmament, demilitarization, and peace

• To use diplomacy rather than militancy as the basis of foreign

policy

• To work to eliminate poverty and exploitation

• To work for civil rights and to respect the natural dignity of all

humans

• To revitalize American democracy

• To create communities with meaningful work and leisure

activities

• To make corporations more publicly accountable

• To respect the environment

These ideas were labeled the “new left” and they became part of the ideological infrastructure of the 1960s counterculture.

The 1962 Port Huron Statement pledged to do

the following:

1960's Counterculture

A culture with values and morals that go against those of established society

• open the textbook to page 762
• scan through and add information to your notes

Music

• Shifted from protest folk singers to psychedelic rock
• the Beatles, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc
• Counterculture artists reached mainstream success
• Music festivals were popular - Woodstock (1969)

The End

Works Cited

• http://www.mortaljourney.com/2011/03/1960-trends/hippie-counter-culture-movement
• http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war-protests
• http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Counterculture.htm
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=1960s+counterculture+movement+feminism&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=OCu6T-jBM4Sy8ATnu-GnCg&sqi=2&ved=0CAYQgQMwAA

Counter culture

Drugs

• Marijuana and LSD were tightly integrated into the 1960’s counterculture
• Psychedelic drugs were used as routes to expand and explore different states of one’s consciousness
• The Red Dog Saloon in CA became an area for drug-selling and psychedelic music festivals.
• In response to a law outlawing LSD in CA, hippies held an event called the Love Pageant Rally (1966)
• This was the first incidence of political activism carried out by the hippies

Feminist Movement

• Feminism was the belief that women should have economic, political, and social equality with men.
• Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) triggered the second wave of feminism in the United States.
• identified the lives of many housewives who were distressed
• argued that women should be allowed to find their own identity

Sexual Revolution

The Counterculture Movement

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"

-Timothy Leary

• Free love and sexual liberation, particularly for women
• Youth fashions became more and more bizarre and sexual
• Sex became more socially acceptable outside the strict boundaries of heterosexual marriage.
• Premarital sexual intercourse increased

• A reaction to the conformity of the 1950's
• conservative
• materialistic
• conformist
• rigid
• Made up of people who were disillusioned by the war in Vietnam and the injustices of society
• Aimed to found another “society” based on love, harmony, and peace

"Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them

"Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives.

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

"Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change.

• The "2nd Wave of Feminism," or the Womens Liberation Movement began in the early 60's.
• Both influenced by and influenced the counterculture movement.

Some key elements in the fixture of the movement were rooted in:

• the literary work, The Feminine Mystique
• Creation of NOW, an organization that fought to "achieve equality for women."
• A womans freedom to choose her place in society.
• New attitudes on sexuality
• FDA approval of the combined oral contraceptive pill in 1960
• Necessity of reproductive freedom

• Non-violent approach through street protests and marches
• Civil Rights Act (1964)
• Voting Rights Act (1965)
• Assasination of MLK led to rioting and violence

Civil Rights Movement

Thesis

The counterculture movement of the 1960’s changed the American mentality from conservative to liberal, encouraging ideas including protests, drugs, and new kinds of artistic expressions that exemplified alternative lifestyles.

The Counterculture's Legacy

• American society is now more open and flexible.
• Change in views about gender roles
• women are now a vital part of the work force
• Increase in racial equality
• More acceptance towards LGBT community
• More open about sexuality
• Wide-spread use of birth control
• Marijuana continues to be a prevalent drug choice
• 1960s music continues to be popular
• Environmentalism becomes a significant issue

• believed that mainstream culture was corrupt and inherently flawed
• attempted to reform society by "dropping out" of it
• rejected established institutions ("the man")
• joined communes away from society
• embraced alternative styles of dress
• converted to Eastern religions (Zen Buddhism)

Hippies

• summer of 1967, where about 100,000 young people gathered to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods, in San Francisco.
• People from all around the world flocked to this neighborhood for free healthcare, food, love, drugs, and basic necessities.
• This was the center of the "Hippie" or counter-culture movement.

Summer of Love