Silent Generation

For the album, see The Silent Generation (album).

Silent Generation is a label for people born from the mid 1920s to the early 1940s[1][2] The name was originally applied to people in North America but has also been applied to those in Western Europe, Australia and South America. It includes most of those who fought during the Korean War. In the United States, the generation was comparatively small because the financial insecurity of the 1930s and war in the early 1940s caused people to have fewer children.[1]

While there were many civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert F. Kennedy and writers and artists like Gloria Steinem, Andy Warhol, Clint Eastwood, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix and the Beat Generation, the "Silents" are called that because many focused on their careers rather than on activism, and people in it were largely encouraged to conform with social norms. Time magazine coined the name in a November 5, 1951 article entitled "The Younger Generation", and the name has stuck ever since.[1][3]

Terminology

They have also been named the "Lucky Few" in the 2008 book The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom,[4][5] by Elwood D. Carlson PhD, the Charles B. Nam Professor in Sociology of Population at Florida State University.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "The Silent Generation, "The Lucky Few" (Part 3 of 7)". Forbes. 30 July 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "The Younger Generation", Time, November 5, 1951
  3. ↑ "The Silent Generation: Definition, Characteristics & Facts". Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  4. ↑ Carlson, Elwood (2008). The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom. Springer Science + Business Media B.V. ISBN 978-1-4020-8540-6. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  5. ↑ Carlson, Elwood (2008). The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom. Berlin: Springer Science and Business Media. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4020-8540-6.
  6. ↑ Carlson, Elwood D. "FSU Faculty Bio". Florida State University. Retrieved 29 November 2012.

External links