- Many college students were moved and influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, and took it upon themselves to also try to create social change. Many of the students protested against the Cold War's foreign policy, specifically the United States's involvement in the Vietnam War. They created the SDS (Students …show more content…
for Democratic Society) which began the trend of the creation of such groups. In 1962, a group of forty students from several Ivy League universities and other influential schools came together to host the first SDS convention to discuss the student's position on different political topics like the country's future, consumerism, and the wage gap between the rich and the poor and how they would work to fix the issues they saw in these topics. Many of the students who called for social change joined together later to create the New Left, which would bring about social change within the topics they discussed. Many of them tried to avoid the United State's involvement in the Vietnam War by dodging the draft by enlisting in the Nation Guard or applying for conscientious objector status.
- The Counterculture created during the 1960s sought to revolt against the idea of a strong government authority and general societal expectations.
Many of those who were a part of the Counterculture of the time were known as "Hippies", a group known for their tie dyed shirts and pacifist outlook on life. The Counterculture of the time change much of America's musical scene, inspiring a more folk music with anti-war undertones like the 1961 ballad "Where Have All the Flowers Gone". Female musicians also rose up within these movement, like Joan Baez. Recreational drugs like LSD and marijuana were praised within this group's music, leading to the more widespread use of these drugs within American society. Another group that rejected societies standards and government and contributed to the Counterculture were the "Flower Children", who sought to celebrate love, shared humanity, and also shared the groups anti-war sentiment. Flower Children were known to amass groups of believes together to protest the idea of war, and celebrate shared human experience in events like "The World's first Human Be-In" which took place in
1967.