Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2024
Historians have treated the counterculture largely as a white phenomenon and drawn sharp boundaries between its escapism and the political engagement of the Black freedom struggle. A look at the counterculture's origins and growth in the late 1950s and the 1960s reveals that the counterculture intersected with Black culture in many ways. White beats, hipsters, and hippies generally admired the civil rights movement's support for equality and nonviolence, but sometimes scoffed at its effort to gain integration into American society. Hippies considered themselves outsiders from society and imagined that they shared affinity with Black Americans. Blacks’ responses to the counterculture ranged from contempt to curiosity to embrace. Some Blacks despised the hippies’ lifestyle and political apathy, but others considered the counterculture an important challenge to “the System.” American culture, style, literature, and music were all affected by the counterculture's experimentalism. The counterculture changed white culture, Black culture, and American culture. Drawing boundaries between cultural forms proves less instructive than focussing on the connections between them.
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89 Reed, “Rise and Fall of a Mini-renaissance.” On Woodstock see Moretta, Hippies, 285–302.
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91 The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “If 6 was 9,” on the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love, Reprise 0853, 1970.
92 Robert Christgau, “Anatomy of a Love Festival,” Esquire, Jan. 1968, at www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/festival.php. On Hendrix's image see Lauren Onkey, “Voodoo Child: Jimi Hendrx and the Politics of Race in the Sixties,” in Braunstein and Doyle, Imagine Nation, 189–214.
93 Jimi Hendrix, “Star Spangled Banner,” Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, Atlantic SD 500-2, 1970, LP.
94 Barbara Campbell, “Sly Stone Is Together,” New York Times, 1 Feb. 1970, D67. See also Ben Fong-Torres, “Everybody Is a Star: The Travels of Sylvester Stewart,” Rolling Stone, 19 March 1970, 28 ff.; Sly & the Family Stone, “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Epic 5-10497, 1969, 7-inch single.
95 Sly & the Family Stone, “Everyday People,” Epic 5-10407, 1968, 7-inch single.
96 The Harlem Cultural Festival was held from 1967 to 1969. The 1969 festival was a series of six concerts held in Mount Morris Park. Raymond Robinson, “Festival Draws over 50,000,” Amsterdam News, 2 Aug. 1969, 1, 43. The 1969 Harlem Festival is documented in Summer of Soul, dir. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Searchlight Pictures, 2021.
97 Mike Jahn, “Rock Audience Moves to Dusk-to-Dawn Rhythms,” New York Times, 18 Aug. 1969, 25.
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101 Clayton Riley, “Sly in the Sky,” Amsterdam News, 18 Dec. 1971, D1, D4.
102 Imamu Amiri Baraka, “The Ban on Black Music,” Black World, July 1971, 9–10. Some ardent proponents of rock, including John Sinclair, also urged his readers to listen to contemporary jazz. See John Sinclair, “Fire Music,” San Francisco Oracle, 1, 3 (Nov. 1966), 14; Sinclair, “Backdrop to Urban Revolution: Some New Black Music,” in Sinclair, Guitar Army, 127–30; originally published in Fifth Estate, 5 Feb. 1969.
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