"Dare to Struggle, Dare to Grin:" Hugh Romney and the Counterculture of the 1960's

by Ryan McNabb

Primary advisor: Reebee Garafalo
Second Reader: Charley Shively

Abstract:

This paper uses the public life of Hugh Romney to trace a history of the 1960's counterculture and identify its major themes, players, goals and realties. As a Beat poet, director of a folk revival coffeehouse, satiric comic, Merry Prankster, hippie, yippie, and Hog farmer, Romney was an active participant in a vanguard group of writers, artists an social activists born in response to hegemonic Cold War American Society. Following Romney's life form his early days in Greenwich Village to his transformation into Wavy Gravy, clown prince of the counterculture, the intersection of social, political, and cultural concerns form which this movement emerged can be examined. Romney is placed into his generational cohort which includes friends and associates such as Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Ken Kesey, Abbie Hoffman and others. Relying on secondary sources and extensive primary material, this paper places the work of this group into its larger historical context and delves into a cultural movement all too often dismissed as infantile, apolitical, and wasted by the society it continues to rebel against.