The agitation for equal opportunity sparked other forms of
upheaval. Young people in particular rejected the stable
patterns of middle-class life their parents had created in the
decades after World War II. Some plunged into radical political
activity; many more embraced new standards of dress and sexual
behavior.
The visible signs of the counterculture spread through parts of
American society in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hair grew
longer and beards became common. Blue jeans and tee shirts took
the place of slacks, jackets, and ties. The use of illegal drugs
increased. Rock and roll grew, proliferated, and transformed
into many musical variations. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones,
and other British groups took the country by storm. "Hard rock"
grew popular, and songs with a political or social commentary,
such as those by singer‑songwriter Bob Dylan, became common. The
youth counterculture reached its apogee in August 1969 at
Woodstock, a three‑day music festival in rural New York State
attended by almost half-a-million persons. The festival,
mythologized in films and record albums, gave its name to the
era, the Woodstock Generation.
A parallel manifestation of the new sensibility of the young was
the rise of the New Left, a group of young, college-age
radicals. The New Leftists, who had close counterparts in
Western Europe, were in many instances the children of the older
generation of radicals. Nonetheless, they rejected old-style
Marxist rhetoric. Instead, they depicted university students as
themselves an oppressed class that possessed special insights
into the struggle of other oppressed groups in American society.
New Leftists participated in the civil rights movement and the
struggle against poverty. Their greatest success – and the one
instance in which they developed a mass following – was in
opposing the Vietnam War, an issue of emotional interest to
their draft-age contemporaries. By the late 1970s, the student
New Left had disappeared, but many of its activists made their
way into mainstream politics.
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