The Biggest Misconceptions About the 1960s

The 1960s is a decade remembered as the decade of change. Popular culture and media like to portray the 60s as a time of wild, colorful clothes, free love, hippies, and drug use, but that isn't all that accurate.

The early part of the decade was much like the 1950s, and change was gradual until a few pivotable moments ramped up political and social unrest in ways it hadn't before. The escalating situation in Vietnam and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 pushed people to start questioning the power of the government and the foundation of society. There was a general unrest and anticipation for something better.

The 60s were punctuated by civic and social movements with all eyes on equality. Throughout the decade, there was an itch for something new. Women started entering the workforce, fueling anger for the first time about wage disparity, which would ultimately ignite the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s. Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Movement was confronting racism and segregation in the South. In California, Cesar Chavez was working to recognize the importance of immigrants in the workforce and economy by starting the National Farm Workers Union to fight for fair wages for immigrant farm workers.

While pop culture, music, and fashion are symbols of the sixties, much more was happening behind the scenes. You only have to look at British pop sensation The Beatles to see how the decade changed. They hit the scene in America with smart suits, short haircuts, and catchy melodies and left the 60s with satin outfits, meditation beads, and experimental sounds.

Let’s dive into the decade and explore some of the biggest misconceptions about the 1960s. (Also Read: Vintage Foods From the ‘60s Worth Trying Now.)

Many associate the 1960s with the Summer of Love. This social phenomenon was when young people were flocking to the heart of the hippie movement in Haight Ashbury in San Franciso. The hippie movement and everything it stood for was sort of flying under the radar until the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in January of 1967. The event brought 20,000 young people to San Francisco to celebrate peace, love, freedom, music, and art. The event was created to unite the different social movements in the area, from Vietnam protesters to hippies to beatniks. After the success of the Human Be-In, the media took notice of what was happening with young people questioning authority and leaning into free love and psychedelics and named it the Summer of Love.

While the Summe of Love was a specific point in time, the movement was laid to rest on its own as the hippies in the Haight staged a fake funeral in October of 1967 to signal the end of the Summer of Love. But that didn't stop young people from heading out to the Bay area for the next few years, where they tried to recreate that specific peaceful moment in time. In 1968 and 1969, the Haight Ashbury scene became less about free love and peace and more about drugs and all of the things that come with it, as many were exploiting the naive runaways and thrill seekers who were looking for something that no longer existed.

Everyone talks about the 1960s and free love, making it seem like people were making love everywhere and that all was right in the little utopia of everyone loving each other and sharing flowers and peace symbols. The actuality of the time was a bit different, and sexual assault and unwanted advances were everywhere.

The 1960s is remembered as a time of sexual revolution, but not everybody wanted that revolution. Young women of the time were given more sexual freedom than their mothers or grandmothers. Still, just because the social norms were opening up and having sex outside of marriage was starting to be more common, many young women did not want to but felt coerced to be sexually active when they were not ready.

It is impossible to have exact statistics of sexual assault and rape from the era because women didn't report being sexually assaulted. Whether it was in the workplace, at university, or at a music festival, sexual assault was common because there were no consequences.

The counterculture movement of the 1960s was based on rejecting social norms and focused on anti-establishment, anti-government, and anti-authority views. The movement referred to everyone in authority as "the man," and anyone over thirty was not to be trusted. But the reality is that the countercultural movement wasn't as big as nostalgia likes us to remember.

Most teenagers and young adults at the time were living their regular lives going to school or work and only reading about the counterculture in magazines. These young people in the 1960s were the baby boomers born after World War II between 1946 and 1964. They grew up in a time of financial prosperity when a family of four could easily own a house and live well on only one salary. Mothers stayed at home to raise babies, and fathers went out to work while kids watched black and white television in the family room. Most young people preferred to stay in their suburban bubble than trek to San Franciso or New York to take drugs and "tune in, turn on, and drop out." Many of the generations preferred The Beatles to Jefferson Airplane and were uninterested in smoking weed.

Movies and television about this time period make it seem like everyone was high all the time, but that is a major misconception about the 1960s. Marijuana was available, but it wasn't nearly as common as people think it was. And most cannabis connoisseurs of the time will tell you that the marijuana of the 1960s was completely different from the marijuana of today. Back then, it was very mild and didn't cause the intense effects that cultivated marijuana of today has on users. But marijuana aside, the real drugs of the 1960s were alcohol and cigarettes.

Most middle and upper-class families had a full bar in their homes, and many offices and workplaces also had minibars. If you have ever watched the series "Mad Men," then you might remember how much drinking takes place in the show and that it is pretty spot on for the time. Cocktails were much more common than joints, and cigarettes were everywhere, from hospitals to airports to schools and shopping malls; smoking cigarettes was a normal part of life back then. Pregnant mothers at the time were even encouraged to drink and smoke because it relaxed them, and pregnant women needed to relax. Fortunately, these days, we know the negative effects of smoking and alcoholism. But in the 1960s, it was more common to drink and smoke than to smoke marijuana or drop LSD.

In the 1960s, more women were in the workplace than ever before, some because they wanted to be and others because they had to be. Working women at the time faced a lot of obstacles, and trying to be both mother and worker was even more challenging back then. When women started working they were earning much less than men. Employers at the time thought they didn't have to pay women fairly for their work because they were just working for extra money or for fun, and their husbands brought home the real money. Wage disparity was the seed that later grew into the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s. Some think that the movement was about sex and taking control of women's bodies, which in some ways it was, but it was ultimately rooted in equality and equal pay.

Hippies may have been everywhere in movies and television shows at the time, but they were actually not that common. It's a common misconception about the 1960s to think that everyone was a hippie. Let's first define what a hippie was at the time. The young folks who wore flowers in their hair in the 1967 Human Be-In were considered the first hippies in the U.S.

However, the origins of the word have a long history. Hippie came from the word hip, which was slang for being up to date or in style, thought to come from the jazz musicians of the 1930s and 40s. Then, the Beatniks of the 1950s took hold of the word, and then, the 1960s Love Children and their flower power movement took over, and it became associated with anyone turning against the mainstream and looking for an alternative lifestyle. The word was a derogative word for many, and it applied to not only flower power hippies but also anyone who tried something different. The reality is that, at the time, hippies were not as common outside of San Franciso and New York as people might think.

The 1960s counterculture movement started the naturalist movement when many left San Francisco and went looking for an alternative lifestyle on farms growing their own food. Natural foods and natural medicine fall under the umbrella term hippie, along with Vietnam vets returning from war or anyone else on the outskirts of society.

Interestingly, the hippie movement has strong ties to European movements from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The bohemian back-to-nature lifestyle was a response to industrialization and modern society. Communal living and an emphasis on art and spirituality were the precursors to what we consider today's hippies. Today, the term is used loosely to define anyone who smokes marijuana, grows their own food, and eats tofu and granola. It is a fluid word and can mean many things to different people.

The contraceptive pill, simply referred to as "the Pill," changed lives in more ways than one. It was created in 1957 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, years before the Free Love Movement started. The main reasons the pill was developed were to control the population and aid in family planning. Researchers were starting to make connections between large families and poverty, and contraceptives were seen as a solution to poverty and extreme suffering. At the time, the eugenics movement was exploring the idea of only certain people being allowed to procreate, and it was under this backdrop that the pill was developed.

Originally, the pill was only intended for use by married women as a way to keep families smaller and was not intended for unmarried women to have sex for pleasure. Religious doctrine and societal norms meant many people didn't talk about sexual pleasure, and it was purely for procreation. But that didn't last long, and later, the pill was prescribed to unmarried women too.

The pill changed everything for women. Reproductive freedom is a fundamental right, and before the pill, if a woman got pregnant, she was forced to have the baby. In the years before Roe vs. Wade, women who had an unwanted pregnancy would subject themselves to shady abortions in dirty clinics or, worse, try and take matters into their own hands, often causing permanent reproductive damage to their bodies and even death.

It is easy to think that during the 1960s, everyone was leaning left in politics, but the truth of the matter is that there were just as many right-leaning people. Many were upset about the ways the world was changing and held tight to the status quo and the lifestyle they had grown accustomed to in the 1940s and 50s. During the 1960s, the Young Republicans was a popular student group across college campuses, proving not everyone was hippie and the conservative right was just as active as the left at the time.

The Vietnam War was not nearly as unpopular as it seemed. The war was vastly different than World War II, where young men were clambering to enlist. The parents of the Baby Boomers struggled with understanding exactly why so many young people were protesting the war. It was a different war than the one they had fought in World War II. During the Second World War, the enemy was clear, and it felt much more like good vs. evil, but the Vietnam War was much more confusing.

Many young people questioned why the U.S. was even there, and the alarming death toll was terrifying. At the time, updates on the Vietnam War were a routine part of the nightly news, and the graphic images were everywhere. Despite this, many older generations and military veterans still believed that U.S. citizens must answer the call of duty, fight for democracy, and give up their lives for freedom. So, while there were many protests against the Vietnam War, there were just as many people who believed in the U.S. and the need to confront communism.

The music festival Woodstock took place in upstate New York on August 15, 1969. It was supposed to be a festival promoting music, love, and peace, but this festival took on a life of its own and soon was out of control. The festival organizers failed in many ways, but the first and foremost was not accurately predicting how big it would and could get.

The promoters planned for roughly 150,000 attendees. They had lined up a venue, which was actually in Bethel, New York because they couldn't get their permits for Woodstock, but since they had already been promoting it, they kept the name. However, they greatly underestimated how many people would show up that hot summer weekend. The exact numbers are hard to know, but most agreed attendance was between 450,000 and 500,000 people.

The weekend started with an unprecedented traffic jam unlike the town had ever experienced. People were stuck, and many just got out and left their cars, not wanting to miss the music, which caused even more problems. Those who made it to the festival were met with huge crowds and not enough food or facilities for them.

There were not enough port-o-potties for that many people and food was scarce. The medical tents were overwhelmed with people with heat stroke, dehydration, and health issues. Plus, there were a lot of drugs, including LSD, and people were having bad trips and possible psychosis, causing more medical issues. Then, the rain came, and the place became a giant mud pit. With not enough bathrooms and zero showers, it was absolute chaos.

So the idea of Woodstock or the romanticized version of it is a fantasy, and the reality is three people died, countless people overdosed, and many were sick due to heat, mud, and unsanitary conditions. The festival was not the peaceful utopia that it was made out to be. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as Woodstock 1999, where violence and mayhem took over.

Peace and love were the fueling concepts for Woodstock, and promoters wanted to host another festival on the West Coast, which was supposed to be the equivalent of a hippie haven of music and fun, but it was even worse than the original. The Free Altamont Music Festival took place at the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California, on December 6, 1969. The date is symbolic because it was the actual end of the decade, but the festival is also considered the end of the innocence of the peace and love movement.

The Rolling Stones were the headliners, with Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash on the lineup. But the festival was poorly organized, and in an effort to keep out the police, the promoters hired the motorcycle group The Hells' Angels to do security for five hundred dollars worth of beer, which was quite a lot of beer back then. But instead of keeping the peace, the group was aggressive and violent, fighting with concertgoers and even attacking a member of Jefferson Airplane who jumped off stage to help another person. Eventually, the entire show was completely out of hand, and violence broke out, leaving four people dead.

In addition to the rowdy crowd and violence, there were other issues with multiple people having bad drug trips. At the time, many young people had switched from alcohol and marijuana to methamphetamine, which was gaining popularity, causing people to freak out and get paranoid and aggressive. The event was an absolute disaster and sealed the deal on the end of flower power and peace. (Next, read What Life Looked Like in the 1960s: A Photographic Tour.)