Abbie Hoffman: Rebel of the Sixties

A detailed Summary of Abbie Hoffman: Rebel of the Sixties

The sixties were a time of radical change for America. A time when there was a decline in what was thought to be normal. Family values and morals were a thing of the past. There was an increase in drug use, casual and premarital sex. This was just the beginning of the changing times. There were many people fighting for their rights. There were protests and demonstrations for every cause imaginable and in the middle of most of it was Abbie Hoffman. Abbie Hoffman was an instigator and supporter for many of the most famous events in the sixties.

I remember living through the fifties and getting along quite well without doing any good. I wasn't raised in a commie intellectual-type family. I got to see blacks demonstrating outside of Woolworth's, being carted off to jail in small southern towns. I remember seeing them on TV singing freedom songs and saying there's something happening in their lives which is not happening in mine right now, maybe there's something about this working for good, putting your energy into something else than making money or a career (Sloman 289). -Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman was born Abbot Howard Hoffman November 30, 1936 in Worcester, Massachusetts. His father, John, was one year old w

hen his family arrived at Ellis Island and changed their name from Shapoznikoff to Hoffman. His mother, Florence, was a native of Clinton, Massachusetts (Jezer 3).

we got into the underground movement. Because we became famous, we got thrust into a national leadership position because we were able to mobilize a number of national demonstrators without being forced to go underground, exiled, dead, be in prison. But in a sense, that number had been done. I'm a product of my environment. I'm more a symbol than a leader (Sloman 285-287)." -Abbie Hoffman

Brandeis it had intellectual sanction (Jezer 20).

It was the use of psychedelic drugs, however, especially LSD that made the radical bohemianism of the sixties so different from earlier bohemian experiences. By the time of Abbie's arrival in the East Village that paranoia about marijuana had been broken, and people were smoking it openly. LSD was readily available, cheap, and pure (Simon 258). Abbie had begun hanging out with the young hippies and became familiar with the drug dealers and crash pads (Jezer 80).

In October 1965, Abbie had helped organize Worcester's first anti-Vietnam War demonstration. About fifty protesters walked from Clark University to the federal courthouse downtown. A second anti-war demonstration, in March 1966, brought out more than five hundred protestors, but they were outnumbered and drowned out by counter-demonstrators. Most Americans responded with hostility to the first, small protests against the Vietnam War. Aspects of the hippie movement attracted Abbie, however. He liked the long hair on the men and the expressive and practical clothing. The hippies had broken with their past, Abbie saw, and because of their use of drugs had become criminals in the face of the law. This appealed to Abbie's sense of himself as an outlaw and to his instincts as a political organizer. The challenge, as he saw it, was to turn the youths' rebellion into a political direction (Jezer 77).

Student activism was starting to heat up in September 1959, when Abbie arrived at Berkeley (Jezer 35). Throughout his life, Abbie claimed to have participated in the Berkeley events he described as "the birth of the sixties." Although he had been accidentally caught in a police sweep against student demonstrators in Paris during his summer trip to Europe, he had never seen police attacking American students. Their brutality shocked him. As Michael R

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Approximate Word count = 1645
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History