The 1960s were a period when long‐held values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among the young. As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding   Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communal living experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture. White, middle-class youth, who made up the bulk of the counterculture, had sufficient leisure time to turn their attention to social issues, thanks to widespread economic prosperity.

Rejection of parents' values is widely understood to be an ordinary developmental stage in maturing toward adulthood. But the 1960s counterculture rejection of adult values went well beyond the norm. It was not just the clothing and music of their parents that young people rejected; it was the entire system of values and institutions that young people called “the Establishment," or “the Man.” 

The counterculture movement divided the country. To some Americans, the counterculture reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, world peace, and the pursuit of happiness. To others, the counterculture movement reflected a self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on America's traditional moral order. To be counter-culture means to have a way of life and set of attitudes different than the prevailing social norm. Three main groups emerged out of this larger counterculture.

THE BEATS

The Beat Generation was a group of post-World War II writers that included Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. The Beats are known for their rejection of materialism and the standards of the day, experimentation with drugs, and spiritual and sexual liberation. Its members called themselves “beats” and were also called “beatniks”. They were largely not political and advocated enlightenment that was induced through drugs, free sex, jazz music, and spiritualism.  

HIPPIES

Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States. The movement reached its peak in the 1967 "Summer of Love," when thousands of young people flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Hippies were mostly middle‐class whites without political drive. Their hallmarks were a particular style of dress that included jeans, tie‐dyed shirts, sandals, beards, long hair, and a lifestyle that embraced sexual promiscuity and recreational drugs. Some young people established communes in the countryside, but most hippies lived in urban areas. Although they were not overall political activists, they often participated in the mass protests against the Vietnam War with a message of peace, love, and unity. 

STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY (SDS)

Increasingly liberal politics in the 1960s came to be known as The New Left which included many different groups, often dominated by middle-class college students, who became disillusioned with life in America. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), founded at the University of Michigan in 1960, emerged as the best-known of these groups and pressed for a more democratic government, nuclear arms reduction, an end to the war in Vietnam, and better living conditions for the urban poor. The New Left was politically active in demanding change to “the Establishment,” by organizing mass protests, sit-ins, marches, and lobbying for socialist policies that benefited the middle class.