Coming of Age in Buffalo - Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era (Hardcover)

Pegged pants poodle skirts, record hops, rock OCynOCO roll, soda shops: in the interval between the bombing of Hiroshima and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, these were distinguishing marks of the typical postwar teenager-if there was a typical teenager. In this richly illustrated account of Youth in postwar Buffalo, William Graebner argues that the so-called Youth culture was really a variety of disparate subcultures, united by age but in conflict over class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Using scrap books, oral histories, school Yearbooks, and material culture, he shows how Buffalo teenagers were products of diverse and often antagonistic subcultures. The innocuous strains of Rock Around the Clock muffled the seething gang loyalties and countercultural influence of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and BuffaloOCOs own Hound Dog Lorenz. Racial antipathies once held in check spilled out on Memorial Day, 1956, when white and black Youth clashed on board a take Erie pleasure boat in a riot that recast the cityOCOs race relations for decades to come.

While exploring the diversity within Youth subcultures, Graebner examines the ways in which adultsOCoeducators, clergy, representatives of the media, and other authoritiesOCosought to contain this generation. The Hi-Teen Club, Buffalo Plan dress code, record hops, graduation ceremonies, film censorship, and restrictions on secret societies and on corner lounging were all forms of social engineering that reinforced social and economic boundaries that were at the heart of the dominant culture. The prevailing adult influence on activities, attitudes, and style served to redirect the misguided Youth of the fifties and to obliterate their image from public memory. Although the media still portrays this decade as the golden age of cultural homogeneity, the diversity in musical preferences, hair and clothing styles, and allegiances to disc jockeys suggest the wide diversity of Youth experiences and challenges to adult authority that were part of coming of age in postwar America."