Describe the growth of teenage culture in the USA in the period of 1955 to 1975

African American singers such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Ray Charles, and Chicano performers such as Ritchie Valens were suddenly all the rage among young, white middle-class teenagers eager to claim their own cultural style and message.

At the same time, Elvis Presley, a young truck driver from Memphis started experimenting with ‘rockabilly’ music, which was his own unique blend of gospel, country-and-western, and R & B rhythms and lyrics.  Elvis’s long hair and sideburns, his knowing grins and disobedient sneers, his leather jacket and tight blue jeans-all shouted defiance against adult conventions.  Young teen girls soon flocked to his performances in tight jeans and small shirts to witness the ‘white, black singer,’ for them selves.  Boys also soon copied the way he dressed and acted.

This prompted cultural conservatives to urge parents to confiscate and destroy Presley’s records because they prompted ‘a pagan concept of life.’  Rock ‘n’ roll not only survived such assaults, it flourished as an exciting new, and different music directed at young people experiencing the turbulence of puberty.  It gave adolescents a self-conscious sense of being a unique group with distinctive characteristics.

Linked to this rapidly developing music culture was the anti-war movement, some young people in protest of the ongoing Vietnam war turned to ‘an alternative lifestyle,’ hippies were strongly against war, one of their many sayings was ‘make love not war.’  They were also fed up of suburban life and soon rejected middle class values and materialism.  To do this they went back to nature to develop ‘their own culture,’ they wore flowers in their hair to depict the hit song of 1967 by Scott McKenzie called ‘San Francisco (be sure to wear flowers in your hair),’ they had weird cloth clothes and a wide acceptance of drugs such as marijuana and LSD.  Free love and drug abuse usually came together, and the discovery of the ‘pill’ gave teens an opportunity to experiment while being safe at the same time.  The easy life with no job or homes or commitments was very appealing.  The hippies followed large groups such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The student movement also added to the teenage culture of the 60s, with many groups campaigning for civil rights or opposing the government it was not surprising that the bolder youth generation soon joined in the conflicts.  By the mid 1960s many students had joined in with large demonstrations for one course or another, as widespread political activity was spread across the colleges and universities in America.  Soon many students began to feel that the American system was corrupt as the assassination of Kennedy, and the stories of atrocities in Vietnam destroyed the optimism which was previously present in the earlier part of the decade.  To start with students demanded a greater say in running their own educations, but soon their attention was turned to the ‘evils’ in society with the Vietnam War and racial discrimination being the two main targets.  The student movement stance won support from millions of teens around America and soon one of the first and most important student protest groups had been formed.  The ‘Students for a Democratic Society,’ or SDS had formed groups in 50 universities by 1965, and its anti-Vietnam stance won it increased support when the nation heard the announcement that President Johnson was sending bombing raids over Northern Vietnam.  At the end of 1965 the SDS had 10,000 members at 150 colleges and universities.

The united force of all of the teenage culture, between 1955 and 1975 was enough to reform the United States of America for a lifetime, and in that lifetime, as the teens of the 50s, 60s, and 70s grew up, the parental culture and society changed, and with it, a wider world wide respect of cultures and societies changed.  All of this is a direct result of rock ‘n’ roll, the Flower Power movement, and the Student protests.