Hippie ('hi-pE): The word often evokes images of long hair, drugs, and free love. But the true hippie, according to The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s by John Bassett McCleary, believes in “truth, generosity, peace, love, and tolerance.” The people mentioned here fit that description.

Walter Lambert considers the hippie label a compliment. Consuelo Luz prefers “flower child.” Carlos Muñoz Jr. rejects it.

Hispanics participated in Chicano, American Indian, antinuclear, antiwar, environmental, civil rights, feminist, free speech, gay rights, and religious freedom movements. Now, some 30 years later…

Walter Lambert says his last haircut was on February 12, 1985.

“It’s a sign to myself that I’m not like other people,” says the 50-year-old medical director of the University of Miami Child Protection Team in Florida.

As a young man, he volunteered in Ecuador, became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and, at Brown University, protested for minority rights by taking over an administration building. Since then, he has been arrested twice for criminal trespassing at a nuclear facility.

He thinks of himself as a role model for his six children: “I want them to be aware that taking a stand for what you believe is important.”

Consuelo Luz, granddaughter of a former Chilean president, left her upper-class home to become a San Francisco flower child in 1971.

Two years ago at a community meeting on water issues, she was arrested. Police asked that she put down her protest sign. She did, but later, with the sign tucked under her arm, she rose to ask a question. Thinking she would raise the sign again, an officer asked her to leave. Luz refused and was arrested. The incident sparked talks between police and activists.

“The obstacle became an opportunity for greater awareness,” she says.

Now 56, she has released an album, Missing Water, which includes an antiwar song she wrote after 9/11.

Carlos Muñoz Jr. became one of 13 L.A. civil rights demonstrators indicted for conspiracy to “willfully disturb the peace and quiet” in 1968. He faced 66 years in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union secured his release.

The Vietnam War, he says, made him think “politically for the first time.” He joined Vietnam veterans for peace groups and became an antiwar advocate.

Now 65, the award-winning author and University of California professor emeritus is working on his autobiography, tentatively titled Victories in the Struggle: The Life and Time of an American Activist.

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