In 1967, it was The Summer of Love. What is it now?
A half-century ago, the hippie movement reached a milestone when roughly 100,000 people converged in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for the Summer of Love. The cultural movement of the “flower power people” promoted peace, love, sharing, caring, meditation, anti-consumerism, suspicion of government, “dropping out,” the use of mind-altering drugs and Vietnam War protests. The creative works developed during that period — songs, poetry, art, fashion — are instantly recognizable and still reverb to this day. The greeting “peace” and the peace sign — holding up the index and middle fingers in a V — have been passed on to the next generations. The peace symbol, adopted from Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s and ’60s, has become one of the most globally recognizable marks. Ultimately, the outpouring of resistance against the war in Vietnam helped turn the tide and end the direct involvement of U.S. troops in that conflict.