Howard Abbie: The Yippies And The Civil Rights Movement

Have you ever wondered how people stood up against something and made a change in history? Abbot Howard “Abbie” Hoffman, born November thirty, 1936 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Abbie was raised in a middle-class household with two younger siblings. He was born during the 40s and 50s which was a time called the transitional generation between the beatniks and the hippies. From a young age he was a troublemaker, he rebelled against many things. He got kicked out of many schools because of him being such a troublemaker. Growing up he continued being a troublemaker and got arrested many times during his lifetime, and since he was living in a time period of war he became anti-war activist during the Vietnam War. Abbie wanting to stand up against the Vietnam War and wanting to do something about it he did many things to try and do this, he co-founded the “Yippies” the Youth International Party, he went to the Pentagon with

many other groups such as the Chicago 7, and also the Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale to try and levitate the Pentagon, and he also trespassed schools to get his voice out so he can be heard.
During the 50s and 60s many things were going on, five years before the 50s World War II had just ended and things were just starting to be “normal” but there were more conflicts that started to show up and a lot involving the United States. Such things were the African-American civil rights, women's liberation, Chicano movements, and the Cuban missile crisis. These aren’t all the conflicts that were going on at the time they are just some and as the United States saw that these problems were all diverse which means that they were facing problems with all types of races, something we can see in current day United States. One of the biggest problems the United States faced during this time was the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a conflict between the communist regime of North Vietnam and their southern allies Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and their ally the United States. This conflict lasted from 1954 to April, 1975. Twenty-one long years of the Vietnam war but the United States did not get involved until March 8, 1965. Abbie saw that there were a lot of people being affected by this war and he decided to make his stand!
As a result of him noticing all of this he knew he needed to do something for all the people that were being affected by this.

Abbie co-founded the Youth International Party or “Yippies”. The “Yippies” were a countercultural group that briefly gained fame as a part of American activism. They did many things from protests to public “pranks” as told in the article of Chicago 10 by PBS. This group really got a lot of attention because of their radical stunts and pranks they pulled off and began to get more and more people to join them and to stand up against the Vietnam War. The Yippies were a group that was also very criticized because of them focusing on large-scale public disobedience and ignoring traditional forms of community organizing and direct protests. This means that because of the way they did things and the way they let people behave themselves and not do it in an acceptable manner they got criticized and they got it a lot. But this did not stop them from achieving what they wanted to stand up against the Vietnam War and many other

things.
One thing that really stood out there in history is the month October 1967 when Abbie Hoffman and many young protesters went out to the Lincoln Memorial and marched down to the Pentagon where Abbie Hoffman vowed to levitate the Pentagon, where he said that he would use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon. This action surprised many people it seemed that Abbie was a very crazy person who believed in something that many did not. At first because of this maybe it did not really catch a lot of people’s attention but later on because of this action that Abbie attempted to do it actually was successful because it convinced many young people to become more active in the politics during the time of all this happening. This action showed that Abbie was doing something that many people supported and it started to show that he was making an impact and he was going to continue to do it until the Vietnam War would end.
This attempt by Abbie and the rest of the people to levitate the Pentagon did not work which was true and was probably known that it was not going to happen but people did notice something. They realized the reality of the Vietnam War, they now started to realize what was really going on and people really started to look around and see that there was something needed to do to change what was going on in America and in the Vietnam War. By people starting to realize this it gave Abbie more hope and more energy to do more things that would lead more and more people to join him and his stand against the Vietnam War.