History of the hippie movement

[9] Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, Hermann Hesse, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.

eden ahbez, a member of this group, wrote a hit song, "Nature Boy'", which was recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole, popularizing the homegrown back-to-nature movement to mainstream America.

[12] The Beat Generation, especially those associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, gradually gave way to the 1960s era counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "freak" and "hippie".

[13] Around that time, Ginsberg connected with Ken Kesey, who was participating in CIA sponsored LSD trials, at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital[14] where he worked as a night aide[15][16][17] while a student at Stanford.

[19] He and his cohorts created what became known as The Red Dog Experience, featuring previously unknown musical acts - Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Charlatans, Grateful Dead and others.

[30][31] Attended by approximately 1,000 of the Bay Area's original "hippies", this was San Francisco's first psychedelic rock performance, a costumed dance and light show featuring Jefferson Airplane, The Great Society, and The Marbles.

[32] On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era.

[19][20][34] When San Francisco's Fox Theater went out of business, hippies bought up its costume stock, reveling in the freedom to dress up for weekly musical performances at their favorite ballrooms.

An audience of nearly 3,000 gathered at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, filling the hall to its capacity for a fundraising effort for the first Hare Krishna center on the West Coast of the United States.

[41] Celebrating both that and the end of the Summer of Love the Death of Hippie event was intended to signal to the rest of the country that it was over in San Francisco and that people needed to bring the revolution to their own locales from now on.

Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer, residents constructed geodesic domes and zonahedra to house themselves, using geometric panels made from the metal of automobile roofs and other inexpensive materials.

Bands like the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), and Jefferson Airplane continued to live in the Haight, but by the end of the summer, the incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade.

[47] In 1967, Stephen Gaskin began to develop a philosophy of hippie perspectives at San Francisco State College, where he taught English, creative writing, and General Semantics.

The Yippies, especially their leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!"

On the third night, riots erupted in response to the curfew, causing police to indiscriminately attack protesters and innocent bystanders alike, including journalists from around the world and even visiting dignitaries, throughout the streets of Chicago.

The violence suffered by the journalists present, even including Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Hugh Hefner, resulted in a mainstream media that was more sympathetic to certain hippie ideals, and less so to politicians, for several years.

Beginning May 12, 1968, the newly formed Poor People's Campaign, started by the recently (April 4) assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., organized a shantytown known as Resurrection City, composed of around 3,000 black, native, and Latino militants, along with a significant contingent of hippies and diggers, encamped on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park.

Over 500,000 people arrived to hear the most notable musicians and bands of the era, among them Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix.

Wavy Gravy's Hog Farm provided security and attended to practical needs, and the hippie ideals of love and human fellowship seemed to have gained real-world expression.

Yippie leader Jerry Rubin's guest appearance on the Phil Donahue Show in that year (April 1) represents the virtual apex of such publicity — surpassed only by his appearance November 7 that same year on The David Frost Show, where he lit a joint and tried to pass it to Frost, then summoned an army of expletive-using hippies planted in the audience to swarm the stage, all on live television.

Yet he hardly exemplified the hippie ideals of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship; through twisted logic, hallucinogenic drugs, and psychological manipulation, he inspired his followers to commit murder.

As early as March 1969 the couple had conducted their first "Bed-In for Peace"; in August 1971 they moved to New York City and joined up with the Chicago Trial "Yippie" defendants and other notable activists.

Sinclair's release was suddenly approved by the state's authorities three days later, a testimony to the potential force of popular pressure; however, soon thereafter, the Nixon administration responded by seeking to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 marijuana conviction in London.

This dragged on through half of 1973, only increasing their status as anti-war and counterculture celebrities; by June 1973, the Watergate hearings had begun in earnest, and the famous pair made their final political statement by attending one of them.

[60][61][62] Hippies were also vilified and sometimes attacked by punks,[63] revivalist mods, greasers, football casuals, Teddy Boys and members of other American and European youth cultures in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hippies were frequently parodied on popular television series of the time like Star Trek, while shows like Dragnet regularly portrayed them in a negative light as drug-crazed hedonists.

Currently, the three-day festival features handmade crafts, educational displays and costumed entertainment in a wooded setting near Veneta, Oregon, just west of Eugene.

It has offered performances and classes by a variety of hippie and counter-culture icons, from musical guests like Big Brother and the Holding Company, Merl Saunders and Babatunde Olatunji to speakers such as Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Paul Krassner, Stephen Gaskin, Robert Anton Wilson, Harvey Wasserman and Ralph Metzner.

The festival producers have made investments in their property, constructing vast telecommunications networks, potable water supplies, sanitation facilities, and safety features such as first aid shelters for every 200-300 fans.