ReZoom

How boomers changed the world: Mad hatters, Motown and mayhem. Free at last ... free at last ...

Father Knew Best
Bless our parents: They served without complaint in World War II, quietly toiled at putting roofs over our heads and standing over hot stoves getting three squares to the table. They also instilled in us a set of core values that had more to do with honor, responsibility and biting the bullet than it did with fairness because, after all, life was not fair — not for them. What our parents did for family and country will be one of their enduring legacies. A time and a place for everything, they told us, and they were right (as it turns out).

If you were white and middle class, the '50s were a great time. Your school was good, your mother stayed home to cook and clean, whether or not she liked it, deferring to your father who got into his unvarying attire each morning and went off to work — whether he liked it or not. Our parents shouldered the new, fabulous status quo like the mantle of gold it truly was after a crippling depression and a World War. They also handed down a long lineage of prejudice that had been nursed for hundred of years.

The '50s Petri Dish
After WWII, the American economy got a huge boost from rebuilding the devastation left behind in Europe and Japan. In the sprawl that became the suburbs, a palpable lack of personal expression had fallen like a pall over the American Dream. If you were sad, bored, questioned your identity or your career path, you said nothing. Along this evolution of frustration, the facade of the '50s began to look like there might not be a lot going on behind the white picket fences — or inside of us.

We, the children of that fat economy, got bored of the sameness of everyday life. Black people, we noticed, were not allowed to vote, and sometimes were killed for not "staying in their place." Even if they did manage a leg up, no one was hiring them or letting them date their kids. Jews were not allowed in country clubs. Women who worked were confined to type away in high heels and skirts because if they dared to wear pants, they were sent home. The upward career trajectory was limited to those who did wear pants — the men. For women, being lawyers, cops or doctors was out of the question, just because.

We began to think that life wasn't fair, but that maybe it should be. To boot, thousands of miles away, a war was being fought based on the domino theory that all of Southeast Asia would fall to the Communist Party if South Vietnam fell. The war became increasingly unpopular and a lightening rod for a generation of increasingly mistrusting youth.

Sex and Drugs
What a natural Petri dish the time was for experimentation. Drugs were brand new and everywhere. Boomers experimented not only with mind-altering substances but with every social more. As a young, restless culture, we would have done anything to shake up the silt that had drifted to the bottom of our collective consciousness. The idea that we could think originally was so new we had to do it in groups. Hence, the birth of the "consciousness-raising movement." Don't try this at home, we thought — you could put out a third eye.

The bricks of the previous architecture almost in rubble, boomers blithely hooked up everywhere. Before the sexual revolution, sex before marriage was hidden, if happening at all. Within a few years, that was a horse that would never go back into the barn no matter how many times abstinence was put on the table as an option. We lived together openly for the first time in American society.

Everything Is Changing
Every music pundit has likely mused over the legacy of music from the '60s and early '70s. Some of it packs so much weight still that it's reborn decade after decade. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin are listed as two of the top three highest-grossing bands of all time because their records to this day sell to new audiences. But it was the message that remains remarkable. From Dylan's disaffected whine about having "no direction home" to Grace Slick's incredible screeching of "feed your head," it was all over the map. Motown gave us Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and the unforgettable Marvin Gaye. Janis Joplin's "Piece of my Heart" hit the streets in 1968 right alongside Judy Collins' reflective "Both Sides Now."

The era delivered so much new music so fast there wasn't enough time to locate the formula, produce it by committee and spoon feed to the public. A lot of good music has come and gone since then, but it was the fusion of blues and rock and a more accessible kind of folk that was to set the stage for later generations. The times were definitely changing as indicated by what song our parents were buying in 1968 — "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.

Our World Grows Larger
Generational ethos is not cultivated in a void. It wasn't as if a disaffected generation woke up, smelled the corporate coffee and took to the streets. What happened in the '60s was built on the backs of generations long before us. The beat generation may have preceded us, but we were more than ready to climb on that bongo bus. If the pill freed us up sexually, affordable air travel freed us from the constraints of staying in one place. Television and cheap transistor radios made the rest of the world seem accessible.

We not only began discovering the rest of the country but other cultures, as well. The Beatles' trip to India in 1968 would take us down a much different spiritual path, one that would render organized religion pedantic — for a while. Part of the roots of the Civil Rights Movement stemmed from the discontent of African American servicemen who had gone to Europe in WWII and returned home having experienced how much better those of color were treated in other countries. We don't take credit for all of it — though we have been accused of doing that — because we know our revolution was part of an evolution.

A Culture Shape Shifts Forever
By the mid '70s, the boomer legacy of social change was rooted in a groundswell that would eventually move the entire landscape of American life from the right to a center that was more inclusive and more tolerant. That shift is still meeting with resistance. Nonetheless, the term "baby boomer," that iconic group of shakers, would come to be synonymous with social reform. While the term is used to describe anyone born from 1946 to 1964, those born at different phases along the baby boomer spectrum have their own sets of memories.

Still, collectively, it's baby boomers who can claim at least some rights to the Feminist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement — a broader path to self-determination for more people. It was baby boomers who did a lot of the thankless grunt work in wrestling the right-to-be from the powers-that-be into the hands of everybody else. And if the democratization of the American Dream meant that some of us were limited to putting it on a lay-a-way plan, it was still a pretty noble thing to do.

But like the widening of any portal, a lot came through that gate when it opened, and some of it wasn't pretty. For one, civility took a major beating, but that's for another day and the second installment of the ReZoomer legacy.

Next week in our boomer legacy series: The Big Chill.

Here at ReZoom, we're exploring ways to leave behind a positive legacy. Click here to see the rest of our stories. Get inspired. It's never too late to create a legacy. More