The Origins of the Hippies.

The hippies originated around 1965. Members of this countercultural movement were one of the three dissenting groups of the 1960’s. Hippies were part of the youth movement. They consisted mostly of white teenagers and young adults between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

The beatniks coined the term “hippy”. These young countercultural movers idolized and emulated the beatniks. The beatniks began to call this young group of people the hippies. The media and society popularized the term. The hippies rarely referred to themselves as such, but rather “freaks” or “freeks”.






“The 1960’s Hippies, Who Were the Hippies?” ArikiArt Official Web site. 6 April 2010.

McCleary, J. The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s. Sex, drugs,
rock ‘n’ roll, civil rights, religion and antiwar protest. New York: The Crown Publishing Group, 2004. Web.
6 April 2010.



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Sex, Drugs & Rock n' Roll: The Hippie Generation

"If it feels good, do it!" When I was a kid growing up in the late sixties, that saying was everywhere; bumper stickers, tee-shirts and posters. Those 6 words truly defined the essence of the hippie way of life. This new generation of young people trying to find their place in the world quickly discovered that the world was no place for them; so they made their own place, their own world. This world revolved around astrology, free love, drugs, and rock n' roll. Shunning mainstream society in favor of communes, bell bottoms, and beads, the hippies redefined youthful rebellion in a way that won't be soon repeated.
The hippies were children of the cold war, growing up with the constant threat of nuclear disaster. Every now and then their school day was interrupted with a bomb drill where the kids had to climb under their desks and wait until Russia was through annihilating the U.S. of A. (I never understood why the teachers insisted that we fold our hands over the back of our necks as we huddled under our desks; was that really going to make a difference?) Bomb shelters popped up in the neighborhood, which brought comfort to the adults but not to the budding flower children. These kids wanted something different for their future, and as they became teenagers and young adults they realized that they could do something about it.

The youth of the 1960's had plenty of opportunities to protest against what they felt was wrong and unjust. Widespread racism and discrimination, despite the Civil Rights Act, led to the birth of militant groups such as the Black Panthers. The National Order of Women was founded in 1966 and the endless battle to be seen as more than just sex objects or mothers began. And almost everyone was against the war in Vietnam, blacks and whites, males and females. Unlike militant groups, the hippies chose to protest the war in Vietnam peacefully, with marches and sit-ins. Despite their peaceful intent, these protests sometimes took a violent turn. In 1970 the National Guard converged on a group of unarmed student protesters at Kent State University. Thirteen students were shot; four of them fatally. Although there would be other protests, some of them involving violence and death, the shootings at Kent State would always stand out as the most horrific.
Another major cause these young, "beautiful people" (as they called themselves) found themselves protesting about was the physical environment in which they lived. As these young flower children grew up from Mother Earth they began to realize the damage that was being done to her. In 1969, a disastrous oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California (where many a hippie still reside to this day) brought ecology to the forefront of the hippie mind. More protests, marches and sit-ins eventually led to the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, and on April 22, 1970 the first Earth Day was declared. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed to monitor and clean up pollution and toxic waste. This "teenage wasteland" of pot smoking long-hairs wasn't such a waste after all.
Hippies embraced Mother Earth with the same passion that they embraced each other. Communing with nature was their way of life, and nothing was more natural to the hippies than drugs. What could be more natural than a weed that grew out of Mother Earth herself? Of course the hippies didn't stop at just marijuana consumption. Pills, mescaline, and LSD were used indiscriminately. Psychedelic drugs were the inspiration behind the colorful fashions and wild works of art that are still so easily recognized as "hippie". LSD wasn't just inspiration, it was religion itself. Lifelong hippie Skip Stone tries to explain it this way, "if using marijuana encourages thoughts about God, and mescaline is like seeing or talking to God, then an LSD trip is like experiencing the world as God. That is its mind-blowing potential." Cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin were also used, but the average hippie stuck to weed and acid. "Avoid all needle drugs," said Abbie Hoffman (the most famous hippie of his time?). "The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon."
Arguably, some of the greatest song lyrics of the Hippie Era can be credited to psychedelic drugs. "Purple haze, all in my brain, lately things don't seem the same. Actin' funny, but I don't know why. 'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky" (Jimi Hendrix); "One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall" (Jefferson Airplane); "Break on through to the other side" (The Doors). Music has always been a way for people to express themselves, and the hippies had no trouble at all expressing themselves. Half a million people witnessed the greatest display of musical expression to date on a dairy farm in upstate New York in August of 1969. It was there that the Woodstock Music Festival took place, and although others have tried (Woodstock II, the Us Festival), it has never been duplicated.
Two young hippie-types, Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, meet up with two suit-types, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, in Woodstock, New York, with the initial plan of opening a recording studio. A music festival was planned to help fund the studio, hippies providing the inspiration and suits putting up the cash. That recording studio never happened in Woodstock, but the music festival that happened in Woodstock really happened, and by that I mean it really happened, man.

Originally planned for 50,000 paid concert-goers and 50,000 party-crashers, the festival saw an incredible 500,000 in all. It is estimated that an additional 250,000 tried to go but were unable to get to the site; 4000 of those held tickets and would receive refunds. Those who did make it to Max Yasgur's dairy farm August 16th, 1969 spent the next three days stoned out of their minds, rolling around in the mud listening to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Thirty performers would grace the stage before it was over, two babies were born and two people died (one overdosed on heroin, the other was run over by a tractor). What should have been a catastrophe due to the enormous crowd and the lack of facilities, food, and shelter, was instead a huge success. The hippie philosophy had always been minimalist, after all; they didn't need much.

Monday morning, August 18th, Jimi Hendrix closed the Woodstock Music Festival with an amazing instrumental rendition of the Star Spangled Banner to the last 40,000 weary hippies. Finally, it was over. Having been a part of history, the tired and muddy hippies began to make their way home.
Soon bell bottoms would give way to acid wash jeans, disco was heard over classic rock, and the yuppie replaced the hippie. Each generation finds ways to explore, define, and rebel. For the hippies those three days at Woodstock came to represent what was the epitome of their peaceful, fun-loving nature: sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with..." (Steven Sills).

References
Evans, Mike & Kingsbury, Paul. (2009). Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked The World. New York/
London: Sterling Publishing.

Stone, Skip. (2000). Hippies A to Z: Their Sex, Drugs, Music, and Impact on Society From The Sixties
to The Present. New Mexico: Hip, Inc.

The Beatniks

The Beatnik movement was a literary movement that originated in New York City in the 1950’s. The origins of the work “beat” are unknown, however the Americans are clear about the meaning. According to John Holmes (1952) the word beat represents mere weariness, the feeling of being used, and being raw. Beatniks were tired in their minds and beat up in their souls. This weariness feeling brought about the persuasive seriousness that the beatnik would express through poetry, song, and peaceful demonstrations. So for Americans the term “beatnik” became synonymous with an intellectual form of youth rebellion. (Bolt, 2009)
Beatnik writers went against the ideals of their current culture in both their lifestyles and literature. These tight knit groups of friends would share living quarters, drugs and ideals for social change. The beatnik represented and embraced the contradictions of contemporary lives creating active and accessible poetry. (Bolt, 2009) through collaborations, experiments with rhythms and questioning of the status quo, the beatnik forever altered the relationship between poetry and popular culture. (Bolt, 2009)

By completely changing the face of American poetry and prose, the beat writers gave Americans a new way of viewing the world and became an instrumental part of American literary history. (Ginsberg, 2010).


Ginsberg, A. (2010). Beat culture: A later manifestation of bohemia.
Retrieved from http://www.mtholyoke.edu

Holmes, J. (1952, November 16). This is the best generation.
The new york times magazine

Beatniks and Hippies: The Cold War and Economy

Although the Soviet Union and the United States had been allies during World War II, their alliance quickly unraveled once they had defeated Germany, their common enemy. The Cold War emerged because the United States and Soviet Union had radically different visions of the post-war world. American politicians believed that the nations of the world were interdependent and should provide open markets for American goods and services. In this vision, free and open trade was necessary to prevent another Depression. In addition, many Americans were proud of their democratic system, believed in Manifest Destiny, and wanted to "share" their version of enlightened self-determination with the rest of the world, especially with the newly-independent states of Asia and Africa. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had an entirely different vision of the post-war world. The Soviets were largely concerned about establishing greater security. By some estimates, the U.S.S.R. had suffered military and civilian losses of 20 million during the war. Many more had died in Stalin's brutal political purges. The Soviet government, for example, often executed as traitors returning Red Army soldiers who had had the misfortune of being prisoners of war. Stalin feared that Germany would regain its strength in a matter of decades and launch yet another attack on Russian soil. In this atmosphere of xenophobia and obsession with security, the Soviet Union wanted to: ward off another attack, establish defensible borders, and encourage friendly regimes on its western borders. Soviet leaders believed that they could meet these goals if they could foster friendly states to the west. For this reason, Stalin and other Soviet leaders extended their control over much of Eastern Europe during the decades after World War II. Soviet domination in this area denied the United States both free access to markets and the opportunity to export its vision of democracy.

Cold war is a term used to describe the relationship between America and the Soviet Union 1945 to 1980. Neither side ever fought the other - the consequences would be too appalling - but they did ‘fight’ for their beliefs using other countries who fought for their beliefs on their behalf e.g. South Vietnam was anticommunist and was supplied by America during the war while North Vietnam was pro-Communist and fought the south (and the Americans) using weapons from communist Russia or communist China. In Afghanistan, the Americans supplied the rebel Afghans after the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 while they never physically involved themselves thus avoiding a direct clash with the Soviet Union

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Politics in the 50s

The issue in the 1950s was not civil rights as the nation moved from the domestic-oriented politics of the 30s and 40s to a new politics centered on communism, corruption, Korea. Though all surrounding social and economic impetus played an integral role in shaping the political arena of the fifties, the underlying theme seemed to be McCarthyism. It is politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The most famous examples of McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings conducted by Senator McCarthy on Hollywood blacklist. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.

Economy in the 50s

The economy during the 1950s thrived. From the end of World War II up until the sixties, the United States became the richest nation in the world. Major corporate growth occurred in the 1950s. A few huge firms began to dominate certain industries; for example, General 
Motors, Ford, and Chrysler controlled the car industry. Many technological advances helped the growth of the economy. Computers, calculators, transistors, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and microwaves became popular, and most were very affordable. The biggest item to have was the television which was developed in the'30s. It became very widespread in the '50s. By 1953, two thirds of American families owned televisions, and by 1955, the average family watched four to five hours a day (Wikipedia). The commercials on TV also helped the economy; not only did they provide money to the broadcaster, but viewers were strongly influenced by these commercials and many went out and bought the advertised items.

Presidents

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was a five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President from 1953-1961. During WWII, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe. In 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). As president, Eisenhower oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, maintained pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, signed legislation that enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System. He was the last WWI veteran to serve as U.S. president, and the first term-limited president in accordance with the 22nd AmendmentFitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963) was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. After Kennedy’s military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 during WWII in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political. He served as democratic in the U.S. Senate from 1953-1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election to become the second youngest president after Theodore Roosevelt, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was the famous quote that shot JFK to popularity. Events during his administration include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the African American Civil Rights Movement, early stages of the Vietnam War, and instrumental in making the Soviets remove nuclear missiles from Cuban bases.

Work Cited
Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joseph McCarthy. New York: Macmillan, 1983.
"The 1950s: Business and the Economy: Overview." American Decades. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 8 Apr. 2010 .
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/dwightdeisenhower/