Why did the counterculture occur in the 60s?

Answer 1

Interjecting a shorter short answer: Civil Unrest.

Short Answer: For MANY reasons, almost to complicated to get into as you can see from the long answer below. But basically, this new generation was growing up in a world that no longer held the same beliefs of their parents. The many cultural changes to education and religion and how people viewed the world.

Long Answer: Let's start with the relevance of the "roaring twenties" (1920's). The country had come out from a depression with new found money and the citizens in America, Germany, France, and Great Britain going to excesses. This money was not shared as it only went to those who already had money. That didn't stop those who were without as loans came cheaply. Attitudes changed in two different directions. The 18th amendment was just enacted prohibiting liquor to be sold. With the passage of the 19th amendment providing women suffrage, women, especially a new group of women felt a new power. One group of women called "flappers" hung out in ballrooms and "Speakeasies" where alcohol was plentiful. The Jazz Age has also started with a lot of new dances, especially among white America, came about. Women felt liberated as the sex scene was in full drive. Abortions were illegal then, and abortions were preformed by someone with a dirty hanger for those who could not afford it. Those who had money, would pay for it by their local physician. Prohibition was authored by the force of the very religious segment who still had a loud voice who rejected the new morality as being immoral. The calls of government regulation on the banking industry and on the stock market was all but ignored.

Starting in the United States, everything came to a head by 1929 as the stock market crashed, people went bankrupt, and the depression began that would go worldwide. The roaring twenties was replaced with bread lines and foreclosures on homes leaving millions without food and homes.

The Depression continued in the United States through World War II, 1945. President Franklin Roosevelt did set up aids to help the most vulnerable with the "New Deal." The returning soldiers were rewarded with the "GI Bill" providing them with a guaranteed post-high school education, homes were selling from $500, gas was about 15 cents a gallon as the Unites States was the biggest supplier of gas and oil in the world. There were a lot of job offerings on all fields. With all the extra money, the baby boomer generation began in 1946. From the beginning of the Depression to the beginning of the baby boomer generation, conservative values held tight where them mother stood home to care for their babies and the dad went to work and during weekends, he would go to clubs, bowling, etc. Once in a while, his wife would accompany him. This would change in the 1950's as Alan Freed, a discjockey, introduced to the world, Rhythym and Blues. Just as in the 1920's, white people started listening to it and started to enjoy it. Alan Freed coined the phrase "Rock and Roll." Conservative values struggled to hang on with the "Red Scare," or the McCarthy Hearings from 1950 to 1953.

In 1960, a new fresh face came onto the scene as John Fitzgerald Kennedy elected President of the United States. He became the first 20th century born president. Though he was an ardent anti-Communist, he became a hero among the young.

In Kennedy's famous inaugural speech, he stated "Let the word go forth.....that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans;" "Let every nation know... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty;" "The world is very, very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life;" and his most famous line "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." A quote that still resonates in my mind.

President Kennedy was calling out to the young to start help build a better nation through volunteerism. The Peace Corps was started and many began traveling to Africa to help with the poor and the sick. Though J. Edgar Hoover, the founder and still the head of the F.B.I., continued to harass those who want freedom in the United States, and denounced those who support those causes, was becoming irrelevant as Robert Kennedy became the Attorney General of the United States. He continued the work of the Eisenhower administration on cracking down on the Klu Klux Klan but with more vigor. The young were also getting involved politically by helping African-Americans in the deep south who needed justice and who needed to be fed. Politics, there, were run by those in the KKK or associated with them. It took Martin Luther King Jr to follow the principles of Gandhi's non-violent demonstrations to effectively pass two Amendments to the Constitution.

The Baby Boomers were becoming the new morality of the country and they did not like or associate with the current morality. President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963 shocked the nation especially the baby boomers. They have lost a leader. Although President Lyndon Johnson continued with Kennedy's social agenda, he escalated the war in Vietnam, starting in 1965. At the time, there was a draft with minimum age of 18 who were not in college. The voting ages limit was 21. President Eisenhower first proposed that the voting age be dropped to 18 in 1954 but was ignored. So those between the age of 18 and up, basically the poor and uneducated, were drafted into the military to particiapte in the Vietnam War.

It was on the college campuses where the political counterculture began, just as it is in the Middle East today. There were many confrontations with demonstrators and police. Riots broke out in many of the major cities either calling for an end to the war or a call for social justice. There were calls for Johnson's impeachment. Others were voicing the theme "Too young to vote, to young to go to war." Timothy Leary, the guru of LSD, quoted to say "Drop out, Turn on, Tune In." More and more young people felt being disenfranchised and opted to drugs. There was also another motto "Don't trust anyone over 30" which now is an oxymoron. This generation also became the "high generation" as the young were either smoking marijuana, downing speed, or on LSD as an escape mechanism from the reality what politicians were saying and also as an escape route from what their parents were telling them. This led to a "generation gap." Especially through music where most parents listened to Frank Sinatra or Perry Como and the young were listening to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, and anti-war folk singers like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul, and Mary. The Hippies formed and their slogan was "make love, not war" that began in Haight-Asbury district of San Francisco around in 1967. The birth control pill became available for women and homosexuality was also on the rise. The women of America were asking for Equal Rights with men and an Equal Rights constitutional amendment led by politicians like Bella Abzug from New York City. The Equal Rights Amendment was rejected.

Long hair was also a symbol of the counterculture symbolizing Jesus Christ, who had long hair. The play "Hair" was released in 1968 summarizing the whole counterculture in whole. To this day, this play has divided a nation. In 1969, the largest assemblance of young people for three days of peace and music came to Bethel, New York known as the Woodstock festival on Max Yasgur's farm. Although a conservative, Max felt the young people deserved this festival to voice their freedom of speech. Clothing changed to bell bottoms and Nehru jackets, like what the Beatles wore in their first Shea Stadium concert in 1965. Some of the wear resembled the 1920's as mini skirts and micro mini skirts became the fad. The Hippie movement ended tragically in 1969 when a self-proclaimed hippie, Charles Manson, and his followers committed murder that included upcoming star actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child. At the time, she was married to famous producer and director Roman Polanski. The murders were extremely vicious and without conscience. Manson himself was not a hippie but a just released con. In 1968, a riot broke out at the Democratic Convention in Chicago where the words in the street was "the whole world is watching" as riot police were battering demonstrators.

The disenfranchised were also the young of the African-Americans as they played a major role in the counterculture. They became more vocal and more violent starting with Malcolm X, who later denounced violence and was assassinated for his change in position, to the "Black Panthers." Many major cities went into flames when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in March 1968 though Robert Kennedy's calls for peace was only heard by a few. Kennedy would be assassinated three months later in June.

Most importantly in this counterculture, races were integrating through marriage as was exhibited in the 1967 film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" starring two giant actors, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. Mr. Tracy passed away before the completion of the movie.

The counterculture in the United States reached its peak between 1966 and the early 1970s. It eventually waned for several reasons: mainstream America's disdain for unrepentant hedonism and conspicuous drug use, and the troubles caused by these excesses; the death of many notable countercultural figures; the end of the Vietnam War; and the end of Civil Rights protests following passage of remedial legislation. The counterculture continues to influence social movements, art and society in general. 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.