Anyone who watched even a fraction of Ken Burn's epic World War II documentary, The War, had to be both impressed and astonished at what the generation involved in that conflict endured. It wasn't just the men and women who put themselves in harm's way, it was those at home who went without luxuries and scrimped on necessities. It was those who left their homes -- and even their home towns -- to work in factories and build the weapons needed to win the war.
Both the struggles and the sacrifices of the "G.I. Generation" were so great, that there's little wonder that many would rush to agree they were (or are, since many are still with us) the greatest generation. If not the greatest in American history, at least the greatest in living memory.
Well... maybe.
But there's another generation, one that did much of its best work twenty years after World War II had ended. One that contributed in different ways to the national character of the United States. One that marched, in Washington and elsewhere, for changes that were in their own way as great as any change won on the battlefield. One that put it's life on the line to fight bigotry and oppression.
This was a generation that was willing not only to pluck the mote from other eyes, but to struggle with the beam in their own. A generation that fought battles more intractable than any faced overseas. In my opinion, they were the real greatest generation.
And no, I'm not talking about the baby boomers.
In November of 1951, Time Magazine's cover story highlighted the generation of young people then just entering into college or the work force. The story described them as "withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent." It was that last word that stuck, and they became known as the "Silent Generation." Not for them the world shaking moments of the G.I. Generation. They wouldn't fight The War or invent The Bomb. No storming the beaches at Normandy. No horrible losses. No rapturous victory.
They came of age in a world that seemed to demand less of them than it had of their parents and older siblings, and as a result they were viewed with a mixture of scorn and dismissal. If you were to take an article on "gen-X slackers" and scrub away the dates, the same epitaphs ascribed to their grandchildren two generations later were first applied to the "Silent." They were lacking in ambition, short on drive, listless, colorless, and lazy. Members of the G.I. Generation looked on them as people who had not paid their dues, but who were all too willing to sponge off of hard won gains.
But here's the thing. For all the great virtues of the G. I. Generation, they came back from all their trials and set about rebuilding a world that was comfortable and familiar, even if that meant familiar flaws. Most of the women who had gone to work in factories were returned, willing or not, to their roles in the home. African-Americans who had earned honors on foreign battlefields, found precious little acceptance in their home towns. The G.I. Generation bought into a version of the American Dream that made every man the king of his own 1/3 acre kingdom, even if that meant the ruin of old urban neighborhoods. Having faced down a racist nightmare in Europe, they seemed in little hurry to see racism's end in the United States. They settled into bowling leagues and the Elks Lodge, confident that they had done their duty and set the world to right.
Meanwhile, if the members of the Silent Generation had not fought in Europe or the Pacific, that didn't mean they hadn't been touched by war. They'd collected scrap metal. They were the ones who read the telegrams announcing the death of their fathers and older brothers. The ones who comforted grieving mothers. They stared open-mouthed at the news reel footage. They experienced war's privations through the eyes of a child, and accepted the declarations about Why We Fight straight into their souls in a way that their older relatives would have found difficult. They heard that we were fighting for truth and justice, and they believed it.
One of those members of the Silent was a southerner, a native of Atlanta, who at the age of ten had sung at the opening of the film "Gone with the Wind." But he had no romantic illusions about that vanished antebellum Dixie. The same year that Time declared his generation "cautious and unadventurous," this young man graduated from college. The writers of the Time article might have felt even more justified if they'd known that within a dozen years, the young man would be locked up in jail. But by then, Martin Luther King, jr. had already been to Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham. "Cautious" did not seem to apply.
Another of the Silent generation was a young man who slipped into the military as an apprentice seaman, but who was still in training when the war ended. He really was regarded as the quiet one in his family, the thoughtful younger sibling in a family where others were more outspoken. In 1951, as Time was declaring his generation "unadventurous" and King was graduating seminary, this young man graduated from law school. Within the decade, Robert Kennedy was doggedly standing toe to toe with Jimmy Hoffa.
The nine students who walked through that cordon of hatred to integrate Little Rock High School were members of the Silent Generation. So was James Meredith, the first black student at the University of Mississippi.
The battles that they fought might not have involved growling tanks and screaming fighter planes, but in some vital ways their wars were harder. They fought corruption and inequality. They fought even though there were attacked by those in their own home towns, and sometimes by those in their own families. They fought without the support of a vast army and armored machines. They fought even when they fought alone.
The Silent Generation was as withdrawn as Malcolm X. As cautious as Royal Robbins. As unimaginative as Ursula K. Le Guin. As indifferent as Gloria Steinem. As unadventurous as Neil Armstrong. As silent as Elvis Aaron Presley.
So why don't we honor the Silent Generation today? Maybe it's because experience showed that the name they were saddled with was so grossly inappropriate. Or maybe it's because, in their efforts to bring about the freedom and equality promised by earlier generations, they showed that individuals transcend labels of race, gender, and class.
The real greatest generation fought a war against odds greater than any army has ever faced. They're fighting it still. Each day calls for new skirmishes with poverty and another engagement with discrimination.
Oliver Wendall Holmes once said of those who had lived through the Civil War "In our youths, our hearts were touched by fire." This was equally true of the Silent Generation, and their fire remains unquenched to this day. As progressives, our responsibility is to join them in this fight in the hopes that we'll one day celebrate "VI" day, the victory of individual freedom and opportunity, and "VC" day, when all those individuals are able to take a place in the greater community.
Precious few statues and memorials mark the struggles of the Silent Generation. But we should not be silent in our praise and support.