Forty Years... 2 Generations

by Diane Brask
NNYM-National Rural Network Coordinator

Exactly forty years ago, a generation did what every generation of young people have always done after a long summer of fun: they returned to school, went to college, got a job, married their sweetheart, or went into the military.
However, this was not just any summer. It was the summer of ’67.

The season was ripe for change. A growing number of that younger generation were discontented, and wanted to reject the American way of life as they saw it then. It was only 2½ years after the Watts riots in Los Angeles, and 3½ years after our nation’s president (JFK) was assassinated. More American troops were being sent to Vietnam to fight what most Americans thought was a senseless, no-win war.

Young people wanted to make a difference in a country that they saw rife with problems of racism, capitalism, materialism, and imperialism. They didn’t trust our nation’s government, they didn’t agree with their parents’ values, and the voice of the church seemed irrelevant and out of touch with their lives.

So in 1967, 100,000 young people, ages 15-25 from all over America, converged on the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco to launch what was coined the “Summer of Love.” It was that generation’s statement to their nation that things were messed up and needed to change.

The only problem was they were messed up too. Once they arrived in San Francisco, they experimented with LSD, pot, casual sex, Eastern Mysticism, and whatever else they felt like. What was billed as a “summer of peace and love” turned into a summer of chaos and disillusionment.

By the fall of 1967, many leaders of the counterculture movement realized that the experiment had backfired. Instead of peace, there was increased crime, riots, drug addictions, broken hearts, and aimless young people.

Some of the hippies declared their own death on October 6, 1967. They had a mock funeral procession through the streets of San Francisco that they called... (FULL ARTICLE PDF DOWNLOAD HERE)