Anti-war movements
The movement against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began small–among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses–but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops proved that war’s end was nowhere in sight.
The movement against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began small–among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses–but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops proved that war’s end was nowhere in sight.
Hippies and the Counterculture
In many respects, the student antiwar movement reflected growing disillusionment among young Americans about politics and society as a whole. Influenced by the writers of the rebellious Beat Generation of the 1950s, young people in the United States expressed frustration about racism, gender issues, consumerism, and authority in general. Many voices in this emergent counterculture of the mid- to late 1960s challenged conventional social norms by embracing sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll music.
These hippies and so-called flower children won the support of a surprising number of academics, including the sociologist Alfred Kinsey, who intellectualized the sexual revolution. The counterculture movement reached its peak in August1969, when about 400,000 people descended on the Woodstock Music and Art Festival at a farm in upstate New York. With its combination of rock music and radical hippie politics, drug culture and free love, Woodstock became a symbol of the antiwar movement and an expression of the American youth counterculture of the 1960s in general.
In many respects, the student antiwar movement reflected growing disillusionment among young Americans about politics and society as a whole. Influenced by the writers of the rebellious Beat Generation of the 1950s, young people in the United States expressed frustration about racism, gender issues, consumerism, and authority in general. Many voices in this emergent counterculture of the mid- to late 1960s challenged conventional social norms by embracing sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll music.
These hippies and so-called flower children won the support of a surprising number of academics, including the sociologist Alfred Kinsey, who intellectualized the sexual revolution. The counterculture movement reached its peak in August1969, when about 400,000 people descended on the Woodstock Music and Art Festival at a farm in upstate New York. With its combination of rock music and radical hippie politics, drug culture and free love, Woodstock became a symbol of the antiwar movement and an expression of the American youth counterculture of the 1960s in general.