Posing the question carefully
Did the hippies advance social justice? The honest answer is that it depends on which cause is meant, which hippies are meant, and which critics are asked. The movement was not an organisation with a program, so its relationship to other causes was uneven. Some people called hippies took part in marches and campaigns, while many avoided political work altogether. Critics at the time, including some Black activists and New Left organisers, thought the hippie scene had little to offer those who lacked the freedom to drop out.
Overlap with the civil rights movement
The hippie generation was shaped by the civil rights movement. Several people who later became associated with the counterculture had taken part in sit-ins, voter registration or Freedom Summer in 1964, and the nonviolent tactics and the language of conscience and community were borrowed from civil rights activism. The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 was led by students, such as Mario Savio, who had been to Mississippi. The song “We Shall Overcome” and the music of the folk revival linked the two worlds.
But the overlap was limited by the late 1960s. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee moved away from integration and towards the Black Power slogan after 1966, and white volunteers were encouraged to work in their own communities. At the same time, the Haight was largely white and middle-class in its newer arrivals. The Fillmore district of San Francisco, a nearby historically Black neighbourhood, lost many homes to urban renewal in the same years, and local activists saw little connection between the hippie scene and their own problems.
The antiwar cause
The strongest overlap was with opposition to the Vietnam War. Many hippies shared the goal of ending the war, and the counterculture contributed songs, imagery and theatre to the movement. Attending marches, burning draft cards, helping draft resisters and refusing to serve all drew on hippies and non-hippies alike. The October 1967 march on the Pentagon, with its flower-in-rifle-barrel photographs, was probably the best-known meeting of the two worlds.
Even here there were tensions. Organisers of the antiwar movement sometimes worried that hippie costumes and drug use hurt their cause with the wider public, while some hippies felt that organised politics was dull or authoritarian. The Selective Service draft also affected young people differently: college students could often obtain deferments, whereas poorer and working-class young men were more likely to be drafted. Critics argued that a politics based on lifestyle choice overlooked that difference.
Early environmental concern
Hippie culture also fed an early environmental sensibility. Back-to-the-land communes, interest in natural foods and distrust of industrial pollution were common. The Whole Earth Catalog, first published in 1968 by Stewart Brand, who had been part of the Acid Test and Trips Festival circles, became a handbook for those interested in self-sufficiency and appropriate technology. Earth Day 1970, held in April of that year, drew millions of participants, many from a youth culture influenced by these ideas, though it was organised mainly by others such as Senator Gaylord Nelson and a team of student organisers.
Environmental concern was already growing for other reasons, including Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and oil spills and pollution incidents that attracted news coverage. The hippie contribution was more a matter of mood and lifestyle than organised campaigning.
What critics said
Several lines of criticism were common, from the period and since:
- Privilege. Dropping out was easier for people with a safety net. Black and poor young people often had fewer choices, and some saw hippie poverty as voluntary.
- Detachment. Critics said that sharing flowers and meditating did not change laws, jobs or housing, and that “turning on” could be a way of avoiding politics.
- Gender roles. Women in the counterculture often found themselves doing domestic work, and some later turned to feminist organising.
- Cultural borrowing. Hippie dress, music and religion drew on African American, Native American and Asian traditions, sometimes with little acknowledgement or understanding.
Some Black activists and writers were openly dismissive of the scene, while others saw common ground in rejecting mainstream norms. The Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland in 1966, was a short distance away in geography but its aims and methods were very different, based on community defence and political organising. The groups sometimes met at rallies, but they were rarely allies in a day-to-day sense.
A fair assessment
It is reasonable to say that hippies contributed to some social justice causes, especially opposition to the war and an early version of environmental awareness, and that their example encouraged tolerance of difference in dress, belief and lifestyle. It is equally reasonable to say that the movement did not address racial inequality or poverty directly, and that its most visible forms often reflected the position of young, white and relatively comfortable participants. The historical record supports both points, and neither should be hidden for the sake of a simpler story.