The Sixties

The counterculture of the 1960s encompasses an array of different groups, identities, ideologies, and interests. There are certainly common themes such as an affinity for rock music, liberated sexuality, and psychedelic drugs. Much of the Sixties counterculture was also galvanized by widespread opposition to the Vietnam war.

The term “hippie” derives from hip or hep, adopted by the Beat Generation from African American slang (Harlem jive) in the 1940s, meaning one who is “in the know,” sophisticated, fashionable, or “with it.” Hippies typically belonged to the generation born early in the baby boom during the years following WWII, approximately 1946–1964, though the term is used by fellow travelers older and younger.

Some of the earliest hippie subcultures began to appear in places like Greenwich Village as early as the late 1950s, around the same time as the burgeoning folk music scene. Other groups started communes far outside of major cities, as part of a back-to-the-land movement. 

In San Francisco, the hippie scene coalesced in Haight-Ashbury. When the “Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In” was held in January of 1967 in Golden Gate Park, over twenty thousand people were in attendance. The event came to symbolize a passing of the torch from the Beat Generation to the younger generation of hippies.