well hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now over the last few videos we've been talking about cultural changes in the united states after world war ii and in this video it's hard time we talk about youth culture in the 1960s so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk counter cultural style then let's get to it so in this video here is what we are trying to do explain how and why opposition to existing policies and values developed and changed over the course of the 20th century and much of that opposition came from young people so i reckon we ought to talk about it first let's talk about youth conflict with respect to the vietnam war two college organizations sprang up in the 1960s that had opposing viewpoints on america's involvement in the vietnam war the first was more conservative and it was known as young americans for freedom and their goal was to support america's involvement in vietnam because it meant the containment of communism the opposing group on the left was students for a democratic society who released their beliefs in something called the port huron statement which stressed participatory democracy and direct government action most important to what we're talking about the group challenged the prevailing norm that every effort must be made to stop the spread of global communism at this point you might be wondering why did a bunch of college students care about what was going on over in vietnam they cared because once they graduated they were the ones who were going to be drafted and sent to fight in what many of them considered an immoral war and so across the country students engaged in massive anti-war demonstrations and we need to talk about one of those demonstrations in particular because it had a deadly outcome and i'm talking about the kent state massacre in 1970. the students at kent state university were protesting the latest escalation in vietnam at the hands of president richard nixon they had been protesting for several days and in the midst of it some vandalism and looting had occurred so in response the national guard was sent to keep the peace and when the national guard tried to disperse the protesters they resisted by hurling rocks at them and in a moment whose causes are still disputed one national guardsman opened fire on the crowd and others followed suit in the end four students were dead and 10 others were wounded so needless to say things were tense in this era when it came to young people in the vietnam war but there was another movement that mainly involved young people and it wasn't so tense it was called the counterculture and it was basically a movement that sought to cast off societal restraint and overturn cultural norms with rebellious styles of clothing and experimental drug use kids don't do drugs anyway the iconic image of this movement was the hippie who dressed in ways completely foreign to traditional american culture the most visible manifestation of the hippie movement was in san francisco's haight ashbury district here hippies gathered into a kind of communal living based on countercultural ideals drug use and the music of the era together they took in prodigious amounts of marijuana and psychedelic drugs like lsd which they considered foundational to the hippie mindset and created the occasion for the unification of the community additionally the hippies were all about that free love i mentioned in a previous video the sexual revolution in which it became increasingly normal to engage in casual sex with multiple partners instead of reserving it for the act of marriage and monogamy this was a patent critique on the sexual norms of their parents generation additionally the hippie movement prized informality not only did their clothes in general appearance critique the prim and proper styles of the 1950s they also valued informality in their music their parents like to listen to the fine-tuned well-trained voices of croners like frank sinatra but in stark contrast to that a key figure in the counter-cultural music scene was bob dylan who indeed wrote lyrics like a poet but whose singing sounded like a drunk cat whose tail just got stuck in an electrical outlet that is harsh i actually love bob dylan but his voice is truly terrible but oh i love it anyway one of the crowning achievements of the counterculture movement was the woodstock music festival held in 1969 in which almost 400 000 people were in attendance they were free some of them were naked many were high as a kite and for several days they listened to music from folks who gave voice to the cultural rebellion like jimi hendrix and crosby stills nash and young and joan baez but the truth is the body and mind can only go on for so long being assaulted with powerful psychedelic drugs and by the 1970s the counterculture had fizzled out because of these excesses okay that's what you need to know about unit 8 topic 12 of the ap us history curriculum if you want to go counter culture to most other kids you know and get an a in your class and a 5 on your exam in may then click right here and get review packets if this video was helpful to you and you want me to keep making them then the way that you let me know that is by subscribing heimler out