University of Delaware - Blue Hen Yearbook (Newark, DE)

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Golden youths with peroxide hair curling over their eyes and ears skimmed along the sparkling surf while their bikinied bunnies lounged along the beach. Rock rhythms pulsed from discotheques as hips and shoulders gyrated through the night in the latest permutation of the Frug, Monkey, or Jerk. Even the President's daughter swung out doing what clever newsmen called Luci's Watusil If clothes had gone Mod, the generation had gone mad, Oldsters watched with varying degrees of disgust and envy as hem- lines went up and hairlines came down. The sexual revolution was in full swing as teeny boppers and college students revelled in an orgy of un- abashed hedonism, unegualed by any generation since the Roaring Twenties. Suddenly a nation that had voted almost unanimously for peace found itself saddled with a painful, unpopular war in Southeast Asia. The Genera- tion Gap had been equaled by the President's Credibility Gap. Johnson's Great Society was shaken by rising inflation and rioting by the nation's poor. Oppressed minorities struck out against a society spending millions on a war overseas while slum conditions in American cities grew steadily worse, All the swinging and dancing of the years before seemed suddenly empty and meaningless. The generation was haunted by the specter of the draft and war hovering outside the walls of the academic community. As the pressures and tensions rose, youth searched for new answers or es- capes. LSD promised to be an answer for some, an escape for others. A horrified nation watched the spread of a new cult of mind benders extol- ling a new religion: Tune in. Turn on. Drop out. 1867 witnessed the birth of the American Hippie.