History Professor Researches Hippies and Hitchhiking

Professor Richard Straw is researching hitchhiking, hippies, and the peak of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Straw is looking at the “long Sixties,” a period that spanned the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 to Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in 1974. Young people, swept into the counterculture, took to the road. Some sought to escape difficulties, but most wanted the adventure of new experiences. At the heart of Straw’s work are interviews with individuals who took to the road. So far, he reports, the experiences were mostly positive, although not all were without trouble. As Professor Straw seeks to bring alive this chapter in history, he would like to hear from you if your thumb was out between 1963 and 1974.  Please contact him at rstraw@radford.edu.