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1960s-1970s Counterculture Essay

1455 Words6 Pages

How did the Youth Culture and Protests of the 1960s-1970s Manifest a Counterculture? The end of World War II brought a large increase in the United States population called the Baby Boom. This group came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and brought with it a tradition-breaking generation of young people. This demographic intended to “fight the system” in order to correct wrongs they found in society. This was the high point for protesting and taking other measures to fight for Civil rights, LGBTQ rights (more specifically gay rights), environmental protection, and women’s rights in America. The revolutionary steps taken by the youth of this time period manifested a counterculture that was viewed as rebellious by older generations but nevertheless …show more content…

The Baby Boomers were raised in the conforming society of the 1950s, which made the culture they developed more non-conforming and rebellious than their childhoods. This generation sought to speak for the common people and fight against leaders and authority, whom they saw as selfish and cruel. An example of profanation by this generation would be its denouncement of America’s founding fathers for their cruel acts against Natives and their abuse and enslavement of other people. This shocked earlier generations and gave the youth of the time a poor reputation from their elders. This source is a scholarly essay discussing the rise in youth counterculture after World War II, and while relatively unbiased does not provide much information on the opinions of older generations from this time period, and generally lacks important first person knowledge. This source was presented at a meeting of the Historical Society and analyzes the development of a youth counterculture after World War II and the popularization of historical knowledge. It is limited because it provides little in the way of first person accounts of the time period. In summary, the sharp differences in principal beliefs between the Baby Boomers and older generations is what founded the youth counterculture, which was rooted in

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