A reality trip on the freaks : a historiography of the counterculture of the 1960s

By the 1960s, parts of mainstream American culture had become so extreme and homogenous that a counterculture of completely opposite values and norms emerged. Although its mantra to 'tune in, turn on and drop out' was a call to retreat from the American dream, the counterculture nevertheless had a dramatic and lasting impact on the mainstream culture it had rejected. The counterculture was overwhelmingly a youth movement, and its members drifted out of America's most studied generation, the baby boomers. The great size of the baby boomer generation insured that, whatever course it took, the rest of America would be forced to take notice. The first boomers began to leave the nest in the early 60s, and for the majority of the white members of this generation, weaned on television and raised in a suburban cocoon, the American dream had been realized and they were eager to keep it going. Not everyone was allowed to take part in the dream however. America denied democracy and the materialistic pursuit of happiness to many, most notably African Americans. While still under the repressive chill of the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement burst into the living rooms of white America and made it quite clear that like other marginalized groups, African Americans were not welcome to pursue the dream. The boomers who took this injustice to heart and joined the Civil Rights movement were among the first of their generation to discover that the people in authority they were raised to trust were not always so deserving. Increasing acts of defiance emerged among the baby boomers when a bloody and difficult to understand war was being waged in Vietnam. Soon thousands of boomers emerged as an angry and demanding force loosely coined the New Left. It was from this group of boomers that a multitude of activist-citizens rose up and to this day are working within the system to make the American Dream a reality for everyone. Yet for a final group of baby boomers the problem was not that the system was broken and need of repair, it was that the system was altogether wrong. To them the American dream was a nightmare. Taking inspiration from the sensibilities of the Beats, these boomers decided the only real route to change was to drop out, to completely abandon the society at large in order to make room for a new one. It is this final group that has come to be known as the counterculture. Like many cultural forces in American history, the counterculture is largely stereotyped into a set of clichés. On the surface the hippy lifestyle of communal living, mind-altering drug use, open sexuality and the constant drone of rock-and-roll seemed to be no more than the perennial adolescent defiance of authority experienced by every generation. It is true that, as a movement, the counterculture burned itself out in less than a decade. On the other hand, with the perspective provided by time, it is hard to deny that the counterculture was more than just a passing phase. When looked at more closely, the counterculture becomes far more complex and varied than films like Forest Gump have portrayed it. It was a movement of changing values and norms that connect to almost every part of contemporary American life and to some extent the world. The historical literature on the counterculture is immense. Almost every aspect of the movement has been studied, and to a large degree there is much consensus among the writers about how it evolved. However, there is quite a bit of controversy on what effects, positive and negative, the movement had on mainstream America. What emerges from the literature on the counterculture are not only varied interpretations of our cultural past, but much debate as to where we are today and where we will be tomorrow because of the changes brought about in the 1960s. Also, until recently, there has been a general consensus that the counterculture somehow failed, and disappeared as just another passing fad. This idea is being challenged because many of the oppositional movements of today claim to be direct evolutionary descendants of the counterculture of the 1960s and pay specific tribute to its contributions. Very little of this controversy is included in modern secondary education history textbooks. In fact, controversy is lacking in almost all subjects in today's classroom. Unfortunately it is controversy that is often the greatest hook teachers have to engage students. It is my hope that this historiography and the accompanying lesson plans will help other teachers lure their students into examining not only the events that make up the counterculture of the 1960s, but the controversial issues that surround it and are with us today.