Fun To Watch 1960s Teenage Baby Boomers Who DIDN'T Rebel

[Celerity]

David Hoffman
744K subscribers

In this video I am presenting clips from the classic 1966 documentary Sixteen At Webster Groves. it was produced by filmmaker Arthur Barron who I was honored to work for on several of his films. Webster Groves is clearly not typical as its teenagers were upper-middle-class. Remember that about 40% of the huge baby boomer generation say that they participated in the activities of the 1960s. This video presents the views of a portion of the 60% who didn't participate and who essentially looked forward to living just like their parents did. I would not call them typical teenagers but they are certainly representative of a group who was just fine in the 1950s. It would certainly be fascinating to talk to these people today but unfortunately, I don't have the names of any of the people who participated in this film. Hopefully some will watch this clip and choose to comment.

[brush]

1. A very narrow slice of '60s American fly-over country.

Not representative of other regions at all...quite unlike the left-leaning Bay Area in California, certainly unlike much on NYC and much of the east coast.

And as far as POCs, anywhere...forget it.

I will agree that small, regimented groups like that existed in many communities all over the country, but on the whole, that video is not representative of most boomers, especially in the late '60s with the revolt against the war, the black power movement and the counter culture and all hell was breaking loose.

[elias7]

3. Also, at the time, US was 85% white, 10.5% black, 3.2% hispanic, 0.5% asian

So not a lot of POC then compared to the almost 40% today.

[secondwind]

2. They were all so fresh-faced, and I wonder how many of the young men

were drafted and sent to Vietnam

My husband was one of those, and thankfully he returned. Soo many did not.

[gab13by13]

4. Here's the way I remember the 60's,

there were 2 groups, the long hairs and the whiskey people. The whiskey people were the establishment people. I was in college back then and took a cake class, Criminology, just to get my GPA up a bit. Oh my god, half the class was long hairs and the other half was whiskey people who wanted to be cops. The debates in that class were amazing, the whiskey people had fire in their eyes, frothed at the mouth, they wanted to bash the long hairs, they defended the Vietnam war.

I was against the war but seeing as my cousin was already over there writing me letters about how they had the VC on the run but had to stop when they hit the Cambodian border gave me another perspective. Since my cousin was already over there we needed to fight the war to win it, which we weren't doing. The whiskey people in that class defended going into Vietnam.

[snowybirdie]

5. A look at

the future Republicans of the 21st Century. Ha! However, having lived through this era, many of these squeaky clean teenagers were very different in the early 70s. Sick of war and flexing a new sense of self reliance, they grew their hair and became protesters. Ya can't trust generalisations.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. This looked much like part of my high school (class of 64, mid-Georgia)

By the time the class of '66 was graduating, this young Bozo was already drafted and in basic training.

I didn't attend my 50th class reunion (or any other high school reunion). If I had any doubts about my decision to not attend, this documentary made me feel a lot better about the decision.

[myccrider]

7. Yeah, not a complete representation because...

1) I was 16 in ‘66, too, and I would have looked and sounded much as these kids do. I didn’t openly join the hippie/anti-war/civil rights movement until ‘68 BUT I was already paying attention to those things in ‘66, I just kept up the cultural appearances of a ‘good girl’ for a couple of more years.

2) this is one of the more conservative parts of the country. My family is mostly in Texas and, yeah, pretty conservative. (My parents moved to California when I was 5) None of my Texas cousins of my age openly joined the ‘rebellion/anti-war’ part, although a few cheered me on.

3) I’ve read that only about 1/3 of the boomers joined the counter-culture anyway. My boomer sister didn’t join in the demonstrations, she did semi participate in the drug/hippie culture aspects.

So I think this documentary was ‘true-ish’ for around 2/3 of boomers, although most of them ended up growing their hair long, wearing ‘hippie fashion’ and probably smoking some weed because of how influential the movement was. My Texas cousins did.