Many alternative ways of life appeared throughout the American history. This article is focused on one of them – the hippie movement. The objective of the article is to briefly describe main reasons which led to its origin in mid-1960s and also to describe the way of life emerging from the political background of the movement. The word “hippie” was developing from the 1930’s till its first usage in newspapers in 1965. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “hippie” is “a person who rejects the way that most people live in Western society, often having long hair, wearing brightly coloured clothes and taking illegal drugs.” Introduction Why did the Hippie movement appear? Jankowski mentions two main reasons why the hippie movement appeared: First reason consists of the external causes with roots in political, social and economical conditions lay outside the individuals, even though they influenced the individual’s behaviour. Second reason contains internal causes which represented changes in the psyche of young Americans. These were most often changes in their attitude towards society. Jankowski points out that it was observed that many young people from the middle classes in America were interested not only in the situation within their class but also the situation in the lower classes, and wanted to remove the differences between them. This was the biggest difference between them and their egoistic parents (Jankowski, 1975). The main point was that young Americans were afraid of the war in Vietnam, possible civil war between black and white people, crime or total destruction from the atom bomb. These were the reasons why they decided to join the hippie movement (Jankowski, 1975). Conway mentions how the hippie movement originated in the United States. He writes that the hippie movement developed from the German group of young people called “Wandervogel“. They lived in communes and rejected the established institutions. They moved to the United States at the beginning of the 1900’s and influenced the youngsters there (Conway, 2011). Who Were the Hippies? Hollis et al. state that the hippie movement was a movement of young people aged 15 – 25 that appeared in San Francisco around 1960. From here it spread worldwide through rock and psychedelic music, literature, art and fashion. However, it had its biggest influence in the USA (Hollis et al., 2011). As Jankowski (1975) mentions, most of the hippies came from the upper-middle class which means that their families were wealthy; the majority of hippies lived in California or in New York. Jankowski writes that many hippies finished secondary school and about half of them were university-educated. Their language was very rich. It was a mixture of literary language from their homes, schools and universities with black people’s slang and professional jargon. They also took over the language of beatniks (Jankowski, 1975). According to Hollis et al., hippies differed from their parents in many ways. Their adults were hard-working to have enough money, but the hippies were the opposite of them.