Peace, Love, and This ’60s Counterculture Quiz

Hell’s Angels were an infamous motorcycle gang that formed in the late 1940s. In 1965, Hunter S. Thompson went undercover and joined the bikers to research them for his book “Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.” Thompson described the group’s ethos of intentional anti-social evocation with his unique brand of “gonzo” journalism, highlighting the eccentric and bizarre.

Timothy Leary received a degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, but his most famous work occurred during his time as a professor at Harvard. Leary and psychologist Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass) began exploring the effect of psychotropic drugs on the human mind in 1960, with what was called the Harvard Psilocybin Project. (Psilocybin is the hallucinogen found in “magic mushrooms.”) Leary and Alpert were fired in 1963 for various violations, including administering mushrooms to undergraduates off-campus.

Bernie Sanders was a student at the University of Chicago in 1963 when he was charged with resisting arrest while protesting the city’s use of “Willis Wagons.” Named for Benjamin Willis, the superintendent of Chicago’s public schools, “Willis Wagons” were trailers deployed to schools to use as overflow for Black students, essentially keeping Black students out of integrated schools.

Jimi Hendrix’s electrified, distorted rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" has become a defining moment of the 1969 Woodstock festival. His band had never actually intended to perform the song and hadn’t rehearsed it. Hendrix surprised them all when, instead of wrapping up his set, he started his iconic performance of the national anthem.

City Lights bookstore was founded by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953. By the early ‘60s, the shop not only sold literature by original Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, but also attracted black-turtleneck-wearing beatnik customers to the store in droves. Tour buses used to stop outside the store to show tourists the beatniks who gathered there.

Psychedelic rock was meant to replicate the mind-altering experiences of psychoactive drugs such as LSD, which became popular among the counterculture of the 1960s. Popularized by artists such as Jefferson Airplane, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, the genre took inspiration from blues, progressive rock, heavy metal, and Indian music.

On April 4, 1969, CBS head William Paley canceled “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” after a series of conflicts over the show’s content. President Lyndon B. Johnson had called CBS to complain about sketches that referenced him, and in turn, Paley asked the show to refrain from content making fun of the President. CBS also censored an appearance by folk singer Joan Baez, cutting a reference to her husband, who had been arrested for protesting the draft.

“The Feminine Mystique” was published by Betty Friedan in 1963, and was hugely influential in the rise of America’s second wave of feminism. Friedan spent five years interviewing women who candidly described feeling unfulfilled in their roles as mothers and wives. In 1966, Friedan helped found the National Organization of Women, and served as president of the group.

The Summer of Love event attracted about 100,000 hippies to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood between June and October of 1967. The massive event was a summer-long concert that brought the genres of rock, pop, and soul together. By October, the media attention had turned the hippie movement into a commercialized spectacle, which many attendees viewed as the “Death of the Hippie.”

Bob Dylan’s given name was Robert Allen Zimmerman. When he started performing in the early 1960s, the singer-songwriter preferred to use aliases on stage for anonymity. He tried out several permutations on his given name before settling on Bob Dylan permanently. His protest songs, including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” became emblematic of the ‘60s anti-war movement.

The Yippies acquired their name from their umbrella organization, the Youth International Party (YIP), founded by theatrical activist Abbie Hoffman. To protest the Democratic Party’s support of the Vietnam War, the Yippies staged a counter-convention of 10,000 people at the 1968 DNC, parading around their own presidential candidate, a 145-pound pig named Pigasus.

U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War drew fierce opposition from the 1960s counterculture, particularly the hippie movement. March 8, 1965, marked the United States’ official entrance to the war, and as the conflict overseas escalated, the opposition at home grew. Anti-war activists organized mass protests of thousands of people throughout the war. U.S. involvement in Vietnam finally ended in January 1973 with the Paris Peace Accords.

Formed in 1969 in opposition to the Vietnam War, the Weather Underground (originally called the Weathermen) was a militant group that evolved from a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Weather Underground used domestic terrorism to promote ideologies such as anti-capitalism, communism, and Black power. The group got its name from a line in Bob Dylan’s song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

In 1966, the Black Panther Party of Self Defense was founded in Oakland, California, by leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They were inspired to organize after witnessing police brutality against civil rights protesters across the country. The group created a wide variety of social programs, including free health care and dental care, a free ambulance program, and free school breakfast for children. After the Black Panthers began advocating for gun ownership, California Governor Ronald Reagan moved to repeal open carry laws in California.

The Hays Code was a set of rules and guidelines that movies in the United States had to follow from the 1930s until the late 1960s. The code banned sexually explicit conduct and the promotion of “bad values,” including swearing. Filmmakers pushed the boundaries of the code in the ’60s, and the changing culture led to the code being officially abandoned in 1968. It was replaced by the content-based ratings system we have today.

Ken Kesey wrote “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” after his experiences in a government drug research program at Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. Kesey’s art and his own experiments with psychedelic drugs led to a following of supporters dubbed the “Merry Pranksters.” The group, mostly based in San Francisco, was known for drug use, flamboyant outfits, outrageous acts of street theater, and confrontation of authority.

The circular peace symbol is understood to express harmony and goodwill, but it was originally designed in 1958 to promote the goal of nuclear disarmament. The design represents the letters “N” and “D” (for nuclear disarmament) using semaphore, a method of visual communication.

Seeing the Pentagon as a direct symbol of the war in Vietnam, a group of protesters descended on the Defense Department headquarters in October 1967. One unique element of this demonstration was the group’s decision to levitate the Pentagon. According to activist and poet Allen Ginsberg, “The Pentagon was symbolically levitated in the people’s minds in the sense that it lost its authority which had been unquestioned and unchallenged until then.”

In 1963, Gloria Steinem was working as a freelance writer when she went undercover as a “bunny” at New York City’s Playboy Club to write an exposé for “Show” magazine. The article detailed how workers were paid less than advertised and subject to “demerits” that could be given for nearly any reason, including for turning down a customer for a date in a supposedly rude way. Steinem was a leader in the era’s women’s liberation movement, helping found organizations such as the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Voters for Choice, Women Against Pornography, and the Women’s Media Center.

Aquarius, the 11th constellation of the zodiac, came to represent the hippie movement after the musical “Hair” premiered in 1968. The song “Age of Aquarius” (covered the following year by The 5th Dimension) opened the musical with a group of carefree hippies dancing on stage. The phrase refers to the time of year when the sun passes through the Aquarius constellation, and for the hippies, it implied that the sun was dawning on their movement.

“Far out,” “groovy,” and “foxy” were all common slang terms in the 1960s. The first two were a ‘60s way of saying “cool," while “foxy” generally referred to an attractive woman. "Bodacious" didn’t rise to popularity until the 1980s, thanks in large part to the film “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” starring Keanu Reeves.