Summer of Love
The Summer of Love refers to a social and cultural phenomenon that unfolded in San Francisco during the summer of 1967, characterized by a convergence of various countercultural groups, including college students, antiwar activists, and hippies. Centered in the Haight-Ashbury district, this movement saw an influx of thousands of individuals drawn by the ideals of peace, love, and alternative lifestyles, often expressed through music, art, and communal living. A pivotal event was the Gathering of the Tribes for Human Be-in on January 14, 1967, which united diverse factions in a celebration of human connection and opposition to mainstream values.
The summer featured significant cultural events, including the Monterey International Pop Festival, which showcased iconic performances from artists like the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix. While the era is often remembered for its artistic expression and idealism, it also highlighted the challenges of the counterculture, including issues related to drug use and urban violence. By September, the initial excitement wore off, leading to a decline in the movement's visibility. However, the Summer of Love's ideals continued to resonate with youth across the nation, influencing broader cultural shifts in America.
Summer of Love
Date: Summer, 1967
The experiment in antiestablishment, alternative living, centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Thousands of hippies and visitors abandoned conventional, materialistic society for a lifestyle of simplicity, sharing, drugs, and rock music.
Origins and History
The characteristic features of the Summer of Love emerged from an unlikely combination of college students, antiwar activists, hippies, and antiestablishment radicals, many of whom formed organizations in and around San Francisco during 1966. Shops selling drug paraphernalia, Indian-print clothing, beads, and other accoutrements of the alternative culture occupied the run-down community of Haight-Ashbury. By July and August, thousands of “psychedelic residents” were flocking to the Bay Area, where marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs were cheap and residents usually were allowed to practice alternative lifestyles.
The Event
Setting the stage for the Summer of Love was a mass meeting on January 14, 1967, known as a Gathering of the Tribes for Human Be-in or simply a Human Be-in. For the first time, most of the diverse antiestablishment groups supported a single event. Hippies, Diggers (members of a communal group), musicians, artists, and leftist political activists joined to hail “a new concert of human relations” led by the young, which recognized “the unity of all mankind.” Tens of thousands of people flocked to the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park to hear counterculture gurus such as Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary decry American materialism and extol the virtues of drugs, which were freely distributed. Local bands such as Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Jefferson Airplane provided additional incentive for the gathering.
By the spring of 1967, the hippie movement was becoming institutionalized. On April 5, representatives of counterculture groups joined in forming the Council for a Summer of Love, for the purpose of organizing celebratory events for the hundreds of thousands of seekers and tourists expected to inundate San Francisco. In May, the Council announced a series of festivals. The most important was the Monterey International Pop Festival, June 16-18, which attracted more than a hundred thousand people. Among the groups performing at this historic concert were the Animals, Simon and Garfunkel, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Steve Miller, the Who, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The music most closely identified with the Summer of Love, however, was the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Released in June, the album remained at number one on the charts for fifteen weeks.
Impact
By September, most of the visitors to San Francisco had departed. The Summer of Love suggested both the possibilities and the limitations of the counterculture. Though the festivals and “happenings” had been largely peaceful, hospitals were increasingly flooded with victims of drug overdoses. A series of drug-related murders tarnished promises of a drug-enhanced utopia. In addition, the example of the alternative communities of the Bay Area had not been able to lessen the urban violence that had broken out in July in many cities across the nation nor to alter the continued escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. However, national publicity generated by the events in San Francisco that summer spread many of the values and sentiments held by the Summer of Love participants to young people across the United States.
Additional Information
Charles Perry provides a well-documented chronicle of the Summer of Love in The Haight-Ashbury: A History (1984).