The Counterculture
Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture, most of whose members were white, middle-class young Americans. To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, and pursuit of happiness. Other people saw the counterculture as self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive of America’s moral order. Authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media. Parents argued with their children and worried about their safety. Some adults accepted elements of the counterculture, while others became estranged from sons and daughters. In 1967 Lisa and Tom Law moved to San Francisco, joining thousands of young people flocking to the Haight-Ashbury district. The counterculture lifestyle integrated many of the ideals and indulgences of the time: peace, love, harmony, music, mysticism, and religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs were embraced as routes to expanding one’s consciousness.
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A concert in the Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 1967 |
The Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, 1967. Students, hippies, musicians, and artists gravitated toward the community’s inexpensive housing and festive atmosphere. |
Musician in the Panhandle, San Francisco, 1967 |
“Summer of Love,” the Panhandle, San Francisco, 1967 |
San Francisco, 1967 |
Easter Sunday Love-In, Malibu Canyon, California, 1968. This was a celebration of the counterculture movement. |
It [the counterculture] was an attempt to rebel against the values our parents had pushed on us. We were trying to get back to touching and relating and living.
-Lisa Law, 1985 |
Timothy Leary, the Harvard-trained psychologist who coined the phrase “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out,” at the Human Be-In, San Francisco, 1967 |
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#counterculture#sexual liberation#rebellion#values#Haight-Ashbury#Timothy Leary#Monterey International Pop Festival#Allen Ginsberg#Suzuki-Roshi#love_in#summer_0f_love#sanfransisco#Hell’s Angels#The “Freak-Out” show#Janis Joplin and Big Brother and The Holding Company#nixon#sexual liberation#lsd