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The 1960s and 1970s were times of rebellion in the streets of America and on the battlefields of Southeast Asia. In 1963, The March on Washington brought 250,000 people to Washington, DC, in a massive demonstration for civil rights. Six years later, in 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival lured thousands of people to a farm in upstate New York.
That same year, 3 days of rioting outside the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar, gave birth to the lesbian/gay rights movement. Cesar Chavez emerged as a leader of the farm workers union and Chicano rights by spearheading a 5-year national grape boycott, which ended in 1970 when growers finally signed a contract with workers in the field. Women launched a revitalized movement for equality in the 1960s, taking up the battle for an Equal Rights Amendment that suffragettes abandoned nearly a halfcentury earlier. The American Indian Movement laid siege to the village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973, demanding the return of captured Indian lands. In the Pacific, the "Hawaiian renaissance" ushered in a renewed cultural and political awakening as young artists expressed themselves in their native tongue—a language which had been suppressed since Hawaii’s annexation to the United States in 1900.
By the early 1970s, the wave of change and diversity had reached Hollywood. Actor Bruce Lee popularized the Chinese martial art of Kung Fu in hit movies before his sudden and untimely death at age 33 while filming Enter the Dragon. Shaft and Superfly paved the way for an era of black action films, with incredibly popular sound tracks. In 1977, more than 80 million people were tuned in to Roots, the Alex Haley miniseries that told a compelling story of African American history in personal terms.
The topic of drug use gained greater media exposure in the 1960s and 1970s. Marijuana use peaked in 1979. Hallucinogens were promoted as a way to achieve spiritual enlightenment.
Beatles songs like Yellow Submarine, Strawberry Fields Forever, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (the initials spelled LSD) were interpreted by fans as celebrations of psychedelic drug experiences. Messages celebrating drug use were common while factual information on the consequences was scarce. Head shops operated openly in most cities, selling drug paraphernalia, psychedelic fashions, and black light posters.
Then, as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, pop culture changed dramatically as the legacy of drug use became clearer. The list of performers who died of drug-related causes kept growing. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two performers who talked openly about escapism through drugs, died of highly publicized heroin overdoses. Jim Morrison of The Doors, another vocal promoter of drugs, died from suspected drug use. Freddie Prinze, a young Puerto Rican comic who broke barriers with his show Chico and the Man, committed suicide in 1977, ending a life tormented by alcohol and drug abuse.
Rick James hit the charts with pro-drug songs like Give It to Me, Baby and Mary Jane, then lost it all to cocaine addiction. Comic Richard Pryor nearly died after setting himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. Irreverent comic John Belushi, known for his work on Saturday Night Live and as one of the Blues Brothers of movie fame, died in 1982 after hooting a speed ball of cocaine and heroin. John Belushi known for his work on Saturday Night Live and as one of the Blues Brothers of movie fame, died in 1982 after shooting a speed ball of cocaine and heroin.
The emergence of HIV/AIDS as a killer virus in the early 1980s and its links to sex and drugs became a serious concern. In fact, by 1986, a Gallup poll found that drugs were considered the number one problem in schools.
This was the environment in which the parents and grandparents of today experienced their own youth culture.
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