Essay On The Counterculture Movement

In the nineteen fifties and sixties the United States saw a change in culture. The counterculture movement which was multiple culture movements trying to gain greater rights for civil groups was mostly made up of the young generation of Americans. The counterculture movement was a success in the mind of movement supporters. The movement changed America from a strongly conservative nation to a more open country. America was tolerant, supported racial ideas, protest, dropping out of school, sex and new art. Without the protest, riots and demonstration, the Counterculture movement may not have been as successful. The counterculture movement of the nineteen sixties made a lasting change in society by achieving civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual

The counterculture movement has many wrong perceptions that are not entirely untrue but leave out some important points of the movement. The hippies were not just a bunch of college age kids causing a big uproar in society or a bunch of wild minded environmentalist. The group was not just people who listened to loud rock music and used illegal drugs. The movement was not all about men with long hair, tie-die shirts, cut off shorts, sunglasses and sandals or a bunch of friends cruising around in a Volts Wagon van. The truth to the counterculture is that the movement started in nineteen sixty-four with young people who opposed the Vietnam War. Middle class white men were the center of the movement throughout the entirety of the counterculture existence. This group of people who are more commonly known as hippies thought that the draft for fighting in Vietnam was wrong. The group believed that if a citizen wanted to be a soldier they would sign up, not be forced. The group also had opposing views on segregation, feminism, gay rights than society. These different viewpoints lead to many young Americans joining the movement for one or multiple

The origin of the word hippie came after the group of young men called the beatniks moved to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. The beatniks fled commercialism in North Beach San Francisco and moved to the Haight-Ashbury area near the University of San Francisco. The beatniks were admired by the young people at the University and young people began to call the beatniks be hippies. The beatniks group did not call themselves hippies but it caught on a different way. The word hippie caught on mainly because the media began to use the term and culture accepted