A peak, then a dispersal
The hippie movement did not end on a single date, and historians disagree about when to say it declined. A common view is that its most visible phase peaked in 1967, was under heavy strain by 1968, and was fragmenting by 1970. Another is that the label faded but many of the people and practices carried on, so that “decline” describes the end of a media phenomenon more than the end of a way of life. Both views contain some truth.
The Death of Hippie, October 1967
The first public sign came from within the Haight. On 6 October 1967, residents and Diggers held a mock funeral in the neighbourhood called “Death of Hippie”, partly to protest at how the press and tourists had turned a small community into a commodity. It was a symbolic act more than a measure of real decline, and the crowds that had arrived during the Summer of Love did not leave overnight. But it indicates how soon the people closest to the scene felt that it had been overwhelmed by crowding, crime, hard drugs and commercial exploitation.
1968: a harder year
The following year was dominated by events that made the optimism of 1967 harder to sustain: the Tet Offensive in January, the King assassination in April and the Robert Kennedy shooting in June, riots in many cities, and the violent scenes outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. The Vietnam War dragged on. For many young people, politics seemed more urgent than the psychedelic vision of changing the world through music and community, and the Haight shrank as residents left and the neighbourhood grew more dangerous.
1969: Woodstock, Manson and Altamont
Three events in 1969 are often used to sum up the end of the decade, though they should be treated as symbols and not as turning points that explain everything.
Woodstock. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York in mid-August 1969 drew an enormous crowd, commonly put at roughly 400,000, in rain and mud, with serious shortages of food and sanitation. It is remembered for the peaceful atmosphere and for the musicians who played, and it became a symbol of the whole generation, though by then it was more a gathering of a wide youth audience than of a small bohemian scene.
The Manson murders. In August 1969 members of a group led by Charles Manson, living in a ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles, murdered several people, including the actress Sharon Tate, in two nights of killings. Manson had spent time on the fringes of the California counterculture and presented himself as a spiritual guru, and the case was widely covered as a dark inversion of the hippie ideal. Most hippies had no connection to him and condemned the killings, but the case coloured public attitudes and was used by opponents of the counterculture.
Altamont. In December 1969 the Rolling Stones headlined a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. The event was marked by violence, and a young man, Meredith Hunter, was killed by a member of the Hells Angels, who had been engaged to provide some security. Many commentators described it as a symbol of the end of the 1960s dream.
Why the scene faded
Several causes are usually offered, and none works alone:
- Overcrowding and commercialisation. The Haight could not sustain the numbers, and hippie fashion, posters and music were increasingly sold to a mass market.
- Drugs. Harder drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine spread in the Haight and elsewhere, and addiction and overdoses became more visible than the early talk of enlightenment.
- Political radicalisation. A part of the youth movement turned from peaceful protest towards more militant action.
- Backlash. Public hostility, police pressure and tougher drug laws made open hippie life more difficult.
- Changes in the war and draft. The Selective Service draft lottery began in December 1969, and American ground forces were withdrawn in stages through the early 1970s, which reduced the urgency of some protest.
Absorption into mainstream life
During the 1970s many elements of hippie life moved into the mainstream. Long hair and jeans became ordinary, rock music went commercial, natural-food shops spread, and interest in yoga and meditation grew. Some former hippies became teachers, small-business owners or professionals, while others continued to live in communes or rural communities. In this sense the “decline” of the hippie as a visible type coincided with a wider spread of its habits.
How to weigh this is a matter of debate. Some writers see the process as a success, and others as the defeat of a radical challenge by commercial culture. Either way, the story after 1967 shows that a movement defined mainly by style and mood proved difficult to sustain, yet easy to absorb.