Times That Kept a-Changin’
After World War II, the economy roared back to life and many young Americans shared in the wealth. By 1956, the average American teenager had $10.55 a week to spend. That was about the same amount an entire American family had to spend after bills were paid at the end of the Great Depression. And spend it they did, on music and clothes, movies and cars. Whole industries sprang up to relieve teens of their spending money. In 1959, teenagers bought ten million record players and countless transistor radios, machines that gave them the freedom to listen to their own music. Most of it was rock ’n’ roll, a new music that often separated them from their parents.
Not everyone was invited to this party. Many young blacks were still stuck in poverty, and in the South they were still humiliated by segregation laws. But their times were changing, too. In 1951, a Farmville, Virginia, high school junior named Barbara Johns led her classmates out of their school to protest their overcrowded building, broken-down desks, and inferior supplies. The students stayed out for two weeks, and their strike developed into a lawsuit against the town. Such behavior was shocking, but it was only the beginning. In the years to follow, young people, white and black, powered the Civil Rights movement, sometimes sacrificing their lives to overthrow segregation laws. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “The blanket of fear was lifted by Negro youth.”
Their example inspired other young Americans to step forward in the following years. They challenged America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and fought to expand opportunities for women and girls. Young environmentalists insisted on the importance of a safe and beautiful planet.
In 1963, songwriter Bob Dylan wrote “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The song became an anthem of the day, and with good reason. Times changed like lightning in the second half of the twentieth century, and young people had never been more at the center of the action.