Silent Generation

The Silent Generation is the cohort commonly defined as people born from 1928 to 1945, between the Greatest Generation and the baby boomers.

Greatest Generation: The generation commonly defined as people born from 1901 to 1927, associated with the Great Depression and World War II. It immediately precedes the Silent Generation in the commonly used American cohort sequence.
Martin Luther King Jr.: An American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who advocated nonviolent resistance to racial segregation. Born in 1929, he became a defining voice of the cohort’s civil rights activism.
Silent majority: A political phrase for a presumed large group whose views are not publicly expressed. The phrase is often confused with the generation’s name, but describes a political constituency instead.
Civil rights movement: A movement for equal rights that challenged racial segregation and discrimination, especially in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Many activists and participants born into the cohort helped drive its campaigns.
Baby boomers: The generation commonly defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the postwar rise in births. Their postwar birth surge marks the boundary after the Silent Generation.
Malcolm X: An American Muslim minister and civil rights leader who advocated Black self-determination. Born in 1925, he sits just outside the cohort’s usual boundary while shaping its political era.
Generation: A group of people born and living around the same time, often understood through shared historical experiences. The Silent Generation is one named cohort within the broader idea of generations.
Counterculture of the 1960s: A social movement that rejected mainstream norms and authority in the United States and elsewhere during the 1960s. Some younger Silent Generation adults took part in the cultural dissent associated with the decade.
Great Depression: A severe worldwide economic crisis that began in 1929 and lasted through much of the 1930s. Many Silent Generation members spent their childhoods amid economic hardship and its aftermath.
John F. Kennedy: The 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Born in 1917, he led a younger generation of politicians whose public image influenced Silent Generation adults.

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MillennialsCompared with: Its formative conditions contrast with those of Millennials across technology, economy, and historical events.