RESOURCES
Summer of Love
San Francisco Chronicle: Summer of Love 40 Years Later
"By the time the fabled y the time the fabled Summer of Love hit San Francisco 40 years ago, the party was already over in the Haight-Ashbury. Yet the mythology of that summer in 1967 has never disappeared." This series of articles by music critic Joel Selvin explores the collision of Beat culture and psychedelic drugs on the streets of San Francisco and challenges some of the lore of the Summer of Love. The series includes interviews and personal accounts (including some videos) with Joan Baez, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Peter Coyote, Wavy Gravy, and Bob Weir. (May 2007)
Rolling Stone: Summer of Love
Rolling Stone marked its 40th anniversary with a double issue dedicated to the Summer of Love. Historian Sean Wilentz calls 1967 "the year that split America in two." "We should remember 1967 not as the time the nation turned on and tuned in," he writes, "but as the moment the United States began hurtling toward a nervous breakdown, riven by conflict that would change the country and the world forever." The anniversary package includes landmark interviews from the era with Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, and flashbacks to what was happening that summer in cities around the world. The San Francisco section explains how Bay Area experiments with LSD made the area a leader in a revolution. (June 29, 2007)
MSNBC: Free Love: Was There a Price to Pay?
This article explores the sexual repercussions of the Summer of Love: "Everything from the rise of Viagra to Girls Gone Wild and feminist porn, to the sex education debate and the Christian fundamentalist backlash, bears the mark of that bohemian sexual revolution. A slide show called "Where Are They Now" documents the "then and now" of major figures of the era, from Jesse Jackson to Wavy Gravy. (June 22, 2007)
California magazine: What a time it was, it was a time
When the Summer of Love was first publicized, it was described as "a union of love and activism previously separated by categorical dogma and label mongering will finally occur ecstatically." Read more about the origins of the Summer of Love, and a first-hand account of how it actually unfolded, in this article by former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres. (July 2007)
Wikipedia: Hippie
The term "hippie, in the contemporary sense, first appeared in print in 1965, and it caught on in mass media in early 1967 -- the same year as the Summer of Love -- thanks to frequent usage by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. Learn more about how the counterculture of the '60s emerged out of the Beat generation and spread. (Note: Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia -- bear in mind that it is written collaboratively by people from around the world.)
Also on PBS and NPR
PBS.org Websites
American Experience: Summer of Love
Watch American Experience's entire hour-long documentary on the Summer of Love online and check out "The Year of the Hippie", a video timeline that starts in October 1966, the "Love Pageant" in San Francisco. (April 23, 2007)
The Sixties: The Years that Shaped a Generation
The web site for this PBS documentary includes a "Who Said That?" quiz, information about the anti-Vietnam War movement, and information on how college campuses became breeding grounds for political activism. (September 29, 2005)
American Masters: Bob Dylan
Martin Scorsese directed this documentary about Bob Dylan. Check out the web site for a biographical essay on the 60's music icon, excerpts from his autobiography Chronicles: Volume I, and an interactive feature that chronicles Dylan's influence. (September 26-27, 2005)
NPR Stories
WBUR: Here and Now: Summer of Love
With flowers in their hair, thousands of young people flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for the 'Summer of Love.' Millions more felt the ripple effects in small towns across America, even without 24 hour cable. Music such as the Mamas and the Papas' "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" epitomized the sentiment of the time. Glenn Smith was a 14-year-old in Texas that summer and he says there was more to the 'Summer of Love' than drugs and music. Glenn Smith is senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute. (June 29, 2007)
All Things Considered: Summer of Love at the Whitney
The Summer of Love exhibit at the Whitney is a sure draw for summer tourists. There are light shows and album covers and music, along with art: Robert Indiana, Richard Avedon, and Jimi Hendrix (a watercolor) are represented. (May 30, 2007)
Morning Edition: Haight-Ashbury a Flower-Power Holdover
It has been 40 years since thousands of young people gathered in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to share what came to be known as the "Summer of Love." It introduced the rest of the country to flower children and social permissiveness. The Haight is still laid back, but there's less love flowing. (July 2, 2007)
Forum with Michael Krasny: Remembering the Sixties with Robert Stone
This segment features a discussion of Robert Stone's personal account of a unique moment in American history known as the 1960s. Stone's latest book is Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. (January 25, 2007)
Fresh Air: Jefferson Airplane
Rock historian Ed Ward looks back at the Jefferson Airplane, a San Francisco rock band that pioneered the psychedelic rock movement often associated with the Summer of Love. Their first four albums were recently re-mastered and re-released. (February 26, 2004)
All Things Considered: Haight-Ashbury Weighs In
Dan Harder visits the San Francisco neighborhood of Haight Ashbury, once the center of America's 1960s counter-culture, to check in on the mood of locals to the war on terrorism. (December 9, 2001)