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First let me say that I'm young and this is before my time. But what exactly set it off? Was it the assassination of JFK? The Vietnam War? I noticed this was a time of self-indulgence, feelings, pleasure, etc. Is all this accurate? Anyone live during this era? What were your experiences? What do you remember most? What's the biggest pro and con of this movement?
Much of what occurred in the 1960's was the result of a sort of "oppression" that occurred in the 1950's.
The 1950's was a decade of conformism. People were expected to get married and have children. Men were expected to be the breadwinner in a family and work full time often at jobs they began to regard as stultifying, purposeless, and boring. Women were expected to become full housewives and have babies. Women generally did not wear pants. They wore dresses even when it was cold outside.
If all that sounds bad, it was really pretty good compared to what non-white or minority people experienced in America. Schools and public facilities were racially segregated. There was little opportunity for most black people to advance up the economic ladder.
Commercials from the time are full of ads of smiling housewives who were generally in their kitchen surrounded by all kinds of kitchen appliances and cleaning supplies. Billboards trumpeted the cause of economic expansion with no regard for its impact on the environment. One common billboard read "A Highway for Your Future" which told everyone the key to prosperity was endless roads and automobiles.
Than you add to this mix a series of events that began in the 1960's: The civil rights movement; the Vietnam War; the Kennedy Assassination; illegal drugs and narcotics; and a country that was more prosperous than any country in the world have ever been.
The result was a sort of explosion as millions of people woke up and began to question things that had been taken for granted. Did more money equate to more happiness? Was our government right when it sent young men to fight and die in a purposeless war? If we have money, but polluted air and water are we really "rich"? Do people exist merely to work and labor or is their some higher purpose to human existence?
I am not fond of the Hippy Movement and some of the other things that took place during this period. I think it represented wasted energy that could have been better spent obtaining education, creating things, and opposing bad government policies more effectively.
Much of what occurred in the 1960's was the result of a sort of "oppression" that occurred in the 1950's.
The 1950's was a decade of conformism. People were expected to get married and have children. Men were expected to be the breadwinner in a family and work full time often at jobs they began to regard as stultifying, purposeless, and boring. Women were expected to become full housewives and have babies. Women generally did not wear pants. They wore dresses even when it was cold outside.
If all that sounds bad, it was really pretty good compared to what non-white or minority people experienced in America. Schools and public facilities were racially segregated. There was little opportunity for most black people to advance up the economic ladder.
Commercials from the time are full of ads of smiling housewives who were generally in their kitchen surrounded by all kinds of kitchen appliances and cleaning supplies. Billboards trumpeted the cause of economic expansion with no regard for its impact on the environment. One common billboard read "A Highway for Your Future" which told everyone the key to prosperity was endless roads and automobiles.
Than you add to this mix a series of events that began in the 1960's: The civil rights movement; the Vietnam War; the Kennedy Assassination; illegal drugs and narcotics; and a country that was more prosperous than any country in the world have ever been.
The result was a sort of explosion as millions of people woke up and began to question things that had been taken for granted. Did more money equate to more happiness? Was our government right when it sent young men to fight and die in a purposeless war? If we have money, but polluted air and water are we really "rich"? Do people exist merely to work and labor or is their some higher purpose to human existence?
I am not fond of the Hippy Movement and some of the other things that took place during this period. I think it represented wasted energy that could have been better spent obtaining education, creating things, and opposing bad government policies more effectively.
There were definitely hippie roots growing in the 50's with dissatisfied teens. Not just the James Dean thing, but was doing some wiki surfing earlier on the father of Rock N' Roll, Bill Haley, and his first big song as a rock band in 1954, Rock Around The Clock. I never thought of this song as something that would bring about rebellious behavior, and upon it's first release that year, it did just OK on the charts and faded, until the movie Blackboard Jungle was released in 1955, this movie has a similar theme to the 1987 film, The Principal, about a run down school with interracial students, with Glenn Ford being the new teacher trying to get thru to the "Sweathogs" to borrow a term from Welcome Back Kotter.
The goon kids were played by Vic Morrow and Sydney Pointier, first time movie roles for both. Vic Morrow's character pulls a switchblade knife on Glenn Ford, and they used Rock Around The Clock as the lead in song for the movie. There were reports of kids vandalizing property after viewing this film, and getting very rowdy in the theatres wherever it was shown, the movie produced a mini crime wave. Atlanta and Memphis banned it, other theaters cut the opening song and edited for content. The song Rock Around The Clock shot back up the charts in 1955, and grabbed the #1 spot for 2 months.
I just watched the film tonight, a 50's eye opener for me, and the first film to use a Rock N' Roll song. I've never seen it before and found it rather interesting, I always associate Glenn Ford with westerns, and with Bill Haley, just a couple years before he was still doing country gigs and his band was Bill Haley & The Saddlemen. I would say this film was a turning point in history, for teenage behavior, but still trying to understand why it got the reaction it did. Glenn Ford does get thru to most the sweathogs by the end of the film. I'm confused, lol.
Those '50s kids with switchblade knives were called juvenile delinquents. They were the high school dropouts, maybe the future criminals. They didn't become hippies.
I think every generation has its misfits and troublemakers.
I can't speak to what happened on your campus, but it also sounds like you're guessing what happened within a group that you weren't affiliated with at the time, what with these "unfamiliar" people. I can say I was "familiar" with the leaders of the ROTC group on my campus & if their visible presence meant that the CIA & FBI had undercover agents on campus to "stir things up" as well. Maybe... I guess I could just idly speculate that here now too.
Not unimaginable since the following summer an ROTC group opened fire with live ammunition on fellow college students who were having a peaceful anti VN war demo & killed & wounded several. Nobody was ever brought to justice about this act of mass murder on the Kent State campus, the murderers & the mystery officer criminal who gave those illegal orders live among us today in complete anonymity... disappeared with the wind. Mystery people.
I was technically a member of SDS on an extremely conservative Catholic university campus & can attest as an actual witness that we became a chapter because we wanted to be affiliated with a larger nationwide group opposed to the illegal war rather than just some small independent group knocking around. There were zero "outside agitators", we were all the same kids we'd known all along & we took a democratic vote on the SDS affiliation & the majority decision took it. Unlike US Presidential elections.
(I was "technically" a member because I was a freshman with no real career goal & dropped out of school not much later rather than waste money on tuition.)
Your reason for making FBI and CIA presence on campus believable is flawed if not incorrect - that is not to say there were no FBI people or informers in hotspots of anti government activity such as Berkeley. Your error is that the shooters at Kent State had nothing to do with ROTC - they were Ohio National Guard members. They had not been activated to control anti war demonstrations on the campus but were diverted there on the orders of the governor after providing security during what I recall as a labor dispute, possibly involving truckers.
my take on it.....the demonstrations against the Vietnam war (hence the peace and love slogan).....youth with high ideals....psychedelic music (and some damn fine rock and roll).....the advent of marijuana coming back into mainstream youth....along with LSD....distrust in ALL politicians for sending us off to war with no real reason for it...
Far Left subversion that benefited from growing prosperity..as the prosperity after WW2 produced a growing population of juveniles who had lived without much hardship and were thus far more receptive to utopian concepts about saving the world one way or another.
Oh my. The far left boogeyman the source of all evil in this country. When unable to discuss the complexities and intricacies of American History why not create a strawman ?
Oh my. The far left boogeyman the source of all evil in this country. When unable to discuss the complexities and intricacies of American History why not create a strawman ?
Yeah I don't know what the Far Left could have to do with a leftist movement. Seems far-fetched. Those radicals protesting at the 1968 convention who held all those speeches at the 72 convention that handed Nixon another term in a landslide nothing to do with the Far Left..just kids with random ideas eh.
Far Left subversion that benefited from growing prosperity..as the prosperity after WW2 produced a growing population of juveniles who had lived without much hardship and were thus far more receptive to utopian concepts about saving the world one way or another.
Some of why the Fifties birthed rowdy teens can be attributed to prosperity, for sure. The encouragement for families to use credit cards made automobiles available to the masses. It became more difficult to keep junior down on the farm and busy.
The social/psychological movement which leaned toward viewing unruly teens as deprived rather than criminal showed leniency to the sociopath as well as the more malleable misguided. They needed understanding rather than consequences. Dr. Spock said so.
We see that played out in popular films of the time - "East of Eden," "The Wild One," "West Side Story, " "Rebel Without a Cause."
The kids are good. It's just that no one understands them. The adults and their values were usually portrayed as cruel, clueless, deserving of disrespect. I remember during the Sixties when I begin learning about social engineering wondering what kind of science those "scientists" were practicing when they assured us that music and film don't influence behavior. It would be interesting to know who was funding their research, wouldn't it?
I've tended to blame it on greed. Give the kids what they'll buy even if it hurts them. It's important to keep them following trends.
The Hippies might have escaped this for a summer or so. It was a heck of an idyllic summer while it lasted. The nature of human behavior always screws everything up.
Oh my. The far left boogeyman the source of all evil in this country. When unable to discuss the complexities and intricacies of American History why not create a strawman ?
From the beginning this thread was a blank canvas upon which about half the posters have splattered their myriad social grievances.
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