The hippie movement

Hippies and ‘dropping out’

In the 1960s, the gap between the traditional values of parents and the views of teenagers increased. For example, the allowed young people to have greater sexual freedom.

Some young people dropped out of normal society altogether. They were known as

They developed an alternative lifestyle where they lived in communities.
They frequently travelled from place to place together.
They dressed differently from people in mainstream society.
Many of them wore flowers in their hair to represent their support for peace in the world.
They became known as flower children.

Many people who joined the hippie movement were originally from middle-class backgrounds. Their rejection of mainstream culture shocked others, because their wealthy backgrounds meant that they had a good education that would have allowed them to persue reputable careers. Their lives as hippies were very different from what their parents may have aspired to and experienced in the previous generation.

San Francisco was the spiritual home of the hippie movement, especially during the Summer of Love in 1967. The hippie movement was best represented by two places in San Francisco:

Location	Importance to the hippie movement
Woodstock	A free music festival took place at Woodstock in 1969. An audience of nearly half a million people lived together outside for four days, looked after each other, listened to rock music and shared a desire for world peace.
Haight-Ashbury	By the mid-1960s, this district of San Francisco was the centre of the hippie movement. Tens of thousands of people came to the area for the Summer of Love. Some people occupied houses illegally and took illegal drugs in public. Protests against the Vietnam War were common, as well as visits from famous rock musicians.

Location	Woodstock
Importance to the hippie movement	A free music festival took place at Woodstock in 1969. An audience of nearly half a million people lived together outside for four days, looked after each other, listened to rock music and shared a desire for world peace.

Location	Haight-Ashbury
Importance to the hippie movement	By the mid-1960s, this district of San Francisco was the centre of the hippie movement. Tens of thousands of people came to the area for the Summer of Love. Some people occupied houses illegally and took illegal drugs in public. Protests against the Vietnam War were common, as well as visits from famous rock musicians.

Negative reactions to hippies

Some people reacted negatively to hippies. For example:

the police targeted them for their drug use
politicians such as the then of California, Ronald Reagan, criticised their rejection of American values
others were angered by their refusal to work

A photograph of a crowd of people sitting down in a field — Image caption,
The crowd waiting for the first musicians at Woodstock, San Francisco, in 1969

Politics and protest - OCR AThe hippie movement