Interpret the Evidence and Put It in Context

Document Links:

Document 25.5 Dick Clark, Your Happiest Years, 1959

Document 25.6 Charlotte Jones, Letter on Elvis, 1957

Document 25.7 The Desegregation of Central High School, 1957

Document 25.8 Gloria Lopez-Stafford, A Mexican American Childhood in El-Paso, Texas, 1949

Document 25.9 “Why No Chinese American Delinquents?” 1955

Interpret the Evidence

  1. What information in these documents confirms commonly held beliefs about teenagers in the 1950s?

  2. What information in these documents challenges the conventional wisdom about teenagers in the 1950s?

  3. Compare the assumptions about adults and teenagers in Documents 25.5 and 25.9. How do they differ, either in tone or in content, from those written by teens (Documents 25.6 and 25.8)?

  4. What do Documents 25.6 and 25.9 tell us about generational differences?

  5. How much do these documents tell us about racial and ethnic differences among teenagers in the postwar era?

Put It in Context

How do these documents show the way teenagers shaped the larger post–World War II society?

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