Were there black hippies???

Hi,



I've always felt as though I was born a little too late.

I have this slight fascination with the 60's and 70's. I'm extremely liberal, if political at all. I'm all for world peace, even if I'm not exactly sure it's attainable.

I think sex is beautiful and I'm even seriously considering a polymorous relationship in the near future. I'm all for monogamy, but I don't think it should be the rule.

My best friend is Mary Jane; she manages to bring out the rest of the philosophical thoughts that I sometimes have a hard time articulating. I want so desperately to indulge in some type of psychedelic at least once. My views on life are somewhat nihilistic in nature so I'm not looking for some type of spiritual awakening, just maybe a little personal insight.

I'm sure everything I mentioned doesn't exactly epitomize the hippie lifestyle. But it's as close as I can get to categorize my traits. Not that I wish to place a label upon myself, I just want to meet other like minded individuals. If these people happen to be hippies then so be it. But then it dawned on me, I've never heard mention of a black hippie. :H

 

Well, I don't know how you define Hippie, but I think that Bob Marley is a pretty good example of a Black hippie. I mean, he didn't wear a tiedye shirt and didn't have pink glasses, but he was a hippie in every way that counts, as far as I understand the concept of hippydom.

 

There were black hippies.. check the musical Hair for example.. here's a song, sang by a black cast member.. being sarcastic on how he is treated and looked upon by 'the system':

(Check here for all the songs!)

Colored Spade


I'm a
Colored spade
A ******
A black ******
A jungle bunny
Jigaboo coon
Pickaninny mau mau

Uncle Tom
Aunt Jemima
Little Black Sambo

Cotton pickin'
Swamp guinea
Junk man
Shoeshine boy

Elevator operator
Table cleaner at Horn & Hardart
Slave voodoo
Zombie
Ubangi lipped

Flat nose
Tap dancin'
Resident of Harlem

And president of
The United States of Love
President of
The United States of Love

(and if you ask him to dinner you're going to feed him

Watermelon
Hominy grits
An' shortnin' bread
Alligator ribs
Some pig tails
Some black eyed peas
Some chili
Some collard greens

And if you don't watch out
This boogie man will get you
Booooooooo!

 

Do the name 'Jimi Hendrix' mean anything to ya?

 

(Sam beat me to it while I was looking for a second pick.. hehe)

Oh.. and Jimi looks like a hippy!



Some black dude named Billy smoking at Woodstock

 

When I was in the Haight in the middle 60s to the late 70s. I didn't see many black hippies. There were a few, maybe two in our commune, one worked at the Kaliflower news paper on Haight St. Another that I had met eairlier in 66, he was very hippie, his name was Teardrop, and went by TD. He was cool. He dissapeared around 68', don't know what happen to him. When I was at woodstock, there were several black people from all over.
I found that most of the black people from the 60s were into harder drugs and didn't do many physicidelics. They were more into the heroin and downer scean. Pimps and pushers. Not saying all blacks did that of course, just what I observed while I was in the Haight.

 

I saw black hippies at love-in and around Hollywood. Ever heard of “Love” with Arthur Lee. They were a late 60’s band with a black singer-songwriter.

 

Like Shameless said, there were always a few brave black hippies (bippies)around.
You had to be brave if you were black and hanging around with alot of white kids in the '60s.
Because integration was still in its infancy, and even white hippies were often reluctant to associate with blacks in anything more than a patronizing superficial manner.
It must have been frustrating to be black with a true hippie spirit in the '60s.
Moreover, most young blacks were involved in their own cultural liberation at that time.
In the '60s most blacks did appreciate that 'white' hippie culture was less intolarant, and more accepting.

 

"bippies" kind of offends me. do people actually say this?

 

That's very true. In fact, the first time I ever met/spoke to a black person was on the first day of junior high school in 1963 and we became fast friends. In the late 60s and early 70s black hippies were few and far between.

I have never heard the word "bippies" before.

 

Many blacks viewed Hendrix as a sellout.They had their own style,more soul than rock and roll.It was all good.It seemed like the races were closer back then as far as the counter culture was concerned.We were trying to change the world and get along with each other.VietNam was our enemy,not each other.peace

 

It does have a strangely offensive sound.

I thought it was strange the very first time I heard the street phrase 'bippies'.

But the subject of black hippies seldom came up, so one would seldom hear the phrase 'bippies'.

Moreover, blacks were so peripheral to the life of white america at that time that many whites wouldn't even have noticed or cared if 'bippies' sounded offensive.

Which is why, even today, many whites are clueless to the racism inherent to our ubiquitous cultural outlook.

 

That's strange. I have never heard the phrase Bippie before. I thought it was a miss-print at first.
I'm really not confortable with it. I don't even like to call black people, black people. That makes them sound different right there, to be refered as a black person instead of just being a person. I don't hear, hey this white person I know did so in so. Or the Italian person I know., Why do it have to be so. We are all people, human beings, we are all different but yet the same. We are all of one race, the human race. We are all here togather on this planet to lean how to LOVE LOVE and grow. Each bringing in what the other may lack. All of us here to work for the All of us. We will never evolve into a higher consciousness unless we let go of the very things we faught so hard against in the 60s. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

 

look i ate a thumb nail .... alright!

 

that was my toe

 

Gatetoejamboree! The scene in ATL. started to change from 'peace&love' to a more negative,'everyone for themselves' vibe with the influx of blacks. The hard drugs became more prevalent. Piedmont Park,a once mellow place to hear free concerts,became a place of violence,rape was common,muggings,etc....Black men were always hittin' me up to 'work' for them. It really went bad fast!This was my perception as a young hippie chick.And no,I'm not a racist.

 

The real black hippies were the Black Power movement a the time, but I don't think one could call a black panther a hippie and get away with it.

 

We are all human.

 

The Black Panther Party were indeed NOT hippies. They were revelutionaries, gurillia warriors. They were not into drugs like the hippies were. They wanted clear headed thinkers, soliders that were capable of following orders. Hell, they even wore uniforms. THe BPP was an organisation, they had levels of entry like the military with captains and generals.

They usually didn't get involve with the small stuff, their goal was much higher aimed, more governmental. They didn't hassle us street people or the communes, we were into flower power and they were into guns. They were not pimps and pushers, those were a different group intirely. They had no association with the BPP, in fact that is what the BPs were fighting against, drugs, poverty, oppression and the black condition.

The media paints a different picture, they always do. The media is run by the gov. who dictate what is to be printed. If the truth was to be published, the people would sorely be suprized as to what extent that the govs. role was in the heroin addiction that ran rampet in Harlem in the 50s,60's, As they, the gov, parked boxcar loads of heroin abanded on the track in harlem ( y'all come and get it) and they did.

We had BPs living in the same building as we (good earth commune) did and wounded knee peoples also. So when the Big Bust came down, it was like a smorgishborg for the Pigs.
They, the pigs came in like storm troopers with guns drawn, teargas and billyclubs. They hit Five of our 'houses' at once, they beat women and tore children from their mother's arms. They broke, crashed and distroyed their way through the houses. it was total chaos. They were beating one dude half to death and shoving anothers face in dogshit.
Babies were crying as I felt my own boy being pulled from my arms as we lays huddled under our covers. I screamed, bite and kicked the hand and bodies of the ones that were taking my boy. They were all over me hitting me with their clubs as I clung to my son. I didn't know what was happening, It was late and dark. I could just see flashlights in my face and hear yelling and crashing. I was terrofied, but still I help my boy. Then I remember being lifted up by several pigs and carried head first down the stairs. I was fighting like a wildcat, I could hear my babys cry fading as they took him off to god knows where. Jom was 3.

As the pigs were loading me into the back of the squadcar, I felt a thud against my head and I was out. I woke up in my panties and tshirt in City Prison downtown on the floor. I had no shoes or clothes and I was in the day room. OMG. I was surround by hookers, drug, addicts and killers.

When I could get to my feet, I tried to get information on my boy, but no one would tell me anything. I was losing my mind. To make matters worse one chick in there took a hatered for me cuz I didn't have shoes on, and kept calling me a dirty hippie. I tried to tell her I was clean before the pigs dragged me through the streets half naked. She didn't care. She would take my tray at meals and and push me out of my seat. I was there five days, she was big mean and black as ebony.
I haddn't been charge with anything and they decided to let me go, just like that. I begged them to tell me where my boy was, but they would not. A lady in property told me that they had a place call Child Haven and that's where they probbaly took him. I would have given that woman a star if I had one.

Well there I stood on the steps of City Prison in a tshirt and undies, barefoot on the other side of town from home. Shit! Where's my boy. I walked to the corner and stopped a van load of hippies and they took me back to the Haight.

When I got home, or what was left of home. I we to the elders to get help getting my boy. Amazon Linda offer to take me to get him. We went to child haven and they brought out my boy. I freeked, they had him in pigtails and a pinafor dressed like a girl. I asked them to release my son to me. They refused. Wrong thing to do. Amazon Linda pulled out a 44 and said, Time to go, I grabed my boy up and out the door we went. Hoodslidin' like Bo Duke. We burned rubber as we left the parking lot. Headed back to Haight. We got to the main house on Oak St. I called my parents in So. Cali and said I was on my way.

I got some things together and was about to leave for the airport when I CPS came pounding on the door, demading my son. Aries Larry grabed me n boy up and took us out the back window, where we had an excape route to another one of our houses down the block. We went over walls through hidded passages and into a tunnel. We came out in a closet in a house down the street. Me and Jom got inside of a trunk and hauled into the back of a truck out of the Haight, where we were got out of the trunk and we headed to the airport. Me n Jom got safely to my parents and we stayed out of SF for a while.