The Birth of Hippie Culture in the 1960s

How did the Grateful Dead reflect new ideas about life and society in the 1960’s?

Know (knowledge):

• Learn about the concept of the “American Dream”
• Connect the ideas of the Hippie movement with the Grateful Dead
• Find out how new ideas and beliefs and actions spread in the late 1960s
• Understand the historical significance of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood

Mastery Objective:

• Students will identify factors that led to the Hippie Movement, and apply learning to explain the significance of The Grateful Dead in igniting the spread of new ideas in the 1960s.

In this lesson, students explore the significance of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the 1960s by watching clips from the documentary Long Strange Trip and analyzing archival documents. They then apply their learning to determine if hippies were trying to change American society, or simply escape it. 

After World War II, The United States entered into a period of enormous economic growth and prosperity. New technologies and industries were developed, union membership was high, and the U.S. government invested in social projects such as public schools, housing, highways, welfare, and veterans benefits. As a result, millions of Americans gained access to meaningful employment, invested in homes, and stocked them with families and new commodities. The birth rate skyrocketed and the nation’s population rose almost 20 percent. The generation now known as the “Baby Boomer” was born.

There were some, however, who were troubled by the effects of this “Golden Era of Capitalism.” Social critics like Herbert Marcuse feared that a growing obsession with consumer goods wasn’t actually liberating people, but rather controlling them. For him, TV shows, popular music, and the newest dishwasher were little more than distractions to placate the masses and keep them distracted and uninterested in the rampant militarization and a world that was spiraling ever closer to nuclear war.

By the time the Baby Boom generation was coming into adulthood in the mid 1960s, Marcuse’s ideas were increasingly being embraced. Many of the young adult “Boomers” became disenchanted with the types of consumption valued by their parents’ generation, and began experimenting with varied modes of thought and styles of living.

One of the most famous of such experiments culminated at Haight-Ashbury, a district of San Francisco, California. Between 1965 and 1967, young people from across the country arrived to Haight-Ashbury, drawn in by cheap rent and the bohemian reputation of the neighborhood. A vibrant counterculture developed, made up of a community of what some would later refer to as “hippies” -- people who rejected the pressure to live as workers, earners, and consumers within a singular family unit.

Rock and Roll was the primary musical language of Haight-Ashbury. Free concerts proliferated in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and on the city’s streets, and venues such as the Matrix and the Fillmore showcased bands that personified the “San Francisco Sound”: Jefferson Airplane. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and others. The band that came to most represent this moment in Haight-Ashbury, however, was the Grateful Dead.

While the Grateful Dead and their fans maintained some elements of countercultural ideals well into the 1990s, much of the idealism of Haight-Ashbury as a utopian location did not survive the 1960s. Following the publicity of the 1967 “Summer of Love,” thousands flocked to the neighborhood, overrunning the area, and, in the language of the day, “burning out.” American corporations saw the value of “flower power,” and absorbed key elements of the movement for marketing purposes, turning much of it into nothing more than a fashion trend that could be found in stores across America. Record companies too saw opportunity, and some of the San Francisco bands ultimately became the Top-40 artists they were so critical of earlier in their careers. Some suggest that by the time the country embraced the counterculture, it was already over.