Counterculture

The counterculture movement of the 1960s reflected the loss of faith in the American system for many young people and a willingness to experiment with new social and cultural patterns.

Most members of the counterculture tended to be young, white, well educated, and from a comfortable economic background. Many experimented with illicit drugs, free sex, sexual patterns, and different social and marital arrangements. The powerful post-World War II ECONOMY raised the expectations of young Americans, giving room for such radical cultural expressions.

The Beat movement grew out of the jazz culture of the 1940s and 1950s. Beats, or “Beatniks” as their critics sometimes called them, strove to be “cool,” appearing detached from “square” society, seeking instead individualism and freedom. A central figure of the Beat movement was JACK KEROUAC. Kerouac coined the term Beat Generation, which first meant weariness with American life, but later came to connote peacefulness and beatitude. Born of French-Canadian parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, Ker-ouac excelled at sports, earning an athletic scholarship to Columbia University in 1940. In the early 1940s Kerouac met poet Allen Ginsberg, and author William Burroughs. In 1946, he met Neal Cassady, whose manic lust for life became an inspiration to the group of writers. The Beats became nationally known in 1956 with the publication of Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems and Kerouac’s novel On the Road the following year. Because of the frank nature of Howl, media reports sensationalized the book and some critics called for its suppression. But the scandal only increased the fame of the Beats. On the Road was also a frank testament to the Beat lifestyle, openly celebrating their appetites for drugs, sex, or whatever thrills they could find. The novel quickly became a classic of countercultural literature, inspiring a generation of young Americans, especially those who found the 1950s a stifling decade in which to come of age. Other preeminent Beats included poets Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco was central to Beat culture, and Gary Snyder.

Like the Beats before them, many young people in the 1960s, especially college students, criticized what they perceived to be a culture of conformity on the part of their parents’ generation, favoring individualism over “fitting in.” Many young Americans were inspired by the Beats. Others learned to question authority through involvement with campus political movements such as the Students lor a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley. Other sources of the counterculture include a resurgent feminist movement, sparked by Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique in 1963, which inspired many young women to question traditional roles. That same year, Harvard University dismissed Timothy Leary for experimenting with LSD and other drugs on himself and his students. Leary, who was often flanked at public events by Allen Ginsberg, became a hugely popular figure in the counterculture, urging students to “Tune in, turn on, drop out.” Americans began to popularly recognize rebellious youth as “Hippies” by 1965. Two years later, thousands of hippies, “freaks,” and others descended upon San Francisco, declaring a “Summer of Love.” Many hippies judged mainstream society overly rational and

Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and Ralph Metzner (left to right) standing in front of a 10-foot-high plaster Buddha, preparing for a "psychedelic celebration" at the Village Theater, New York City (Library of Congress)

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Technological, opting for things “natural,” such as organic foods, marijuana, and nudism. Rock musicians such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin became iconic figures whose recordings and concerts were of central significance in the lives of their fans.

There is no single coherent narrative of the counterculture in the 1960s; the number of movements and fads is too numerous to catalog briefly. As the decade progressed, some countercultural ideas and customs became more popular or acceptable, among them relaxed styles of dress, long hair, vegetarianism, rock and roll music, and extramarital sexual activity. Advertisers began to employ catchwords and styles favored by hippies in order to appear “with it” in the eyes of consumers. At the same time, many countercultural groups drifted further from mainstream society. Some fled from the cities for rural communes in remote places such as Taos, New Mexico, or to rural outposts in Northern California. Others such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and their Youth International Party, or “Yippies,” embraced political radicalism and revolution. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968, the Yippies gained national attention when they proposed the nomination of a pig for president and became involved in violent riots that convulsed Chicago’s streets. Many countercultural figures, including Rubin and Hoffman, were arrested at the convention, and the narrow victory that November of “law and order” candidate Richard M. Nixon may have been influenced, albeit negatively, by the actions of the radical counterculture.

Further reading: Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987); David Horowitz, Michael Lerner, and Craig Pyes, eds., Counterculture and Revolution (New York: Random House, 1972); Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

—Patrick J. Walsh