“When I Was Your Age…”: Fifty Years of Trends at Milby 

Lia Amieva Mejia 

Here’s a fun fact: Teenagers have attended Charles H. Milby High School since before “teenagers” existed. Of course, people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen existed long before Milby’s founding in 1926. Even the caveman was, at one point, a cave adolescent.ⁱ It was not until the 1940s, however, that Americans – and especially U.S. advertisers– recognized that they constituted a distinct type of person and subsequently coined the term “teenager.” The change began during the Great Depression when a majority of American teenagers started attending high school rather than entering the workforce where jobs were scarce. Thus, they spent more time with peers and less time under adult supervision. Moreover, the post-World War II economic boom of the forties meant more young people could afford the latest fashions; and when rock and roll hit in the fifties, music became a permanent part of this new teen culture.ⁱⁱ  

Just as Milby High School is part of the East End’s history, teen culture is part of Milby’s history. While teen culture includes almost everything involved with “fitting in,” the focus here is on music, fashion, and gathering spots popular with Milby students between 1950 and 2000 based on a survey of thirty Milby alumni who attended between 1950 and 2014, school yearbooks, and research on national trends.ⁱⁱⁱ  

MUSIC  

The advent of rock and roll in the 1950s was a game changer for music. Sam Phillips, who produced records by icons like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, argued that the audience, not the music, made the genre innovative. Radios had become more affordable and commonplace in vehicles, giving teens access to a new world of music that their parents neither understood nor accepted.^iv This marked the first time teenagers had the market influence to independently sustain a musical genre, and radio DJs, most famously Alan Freed of Cleveland, Ohio, happily connected audiences nationwide with the young upstarts leading this exciting new style.  

Adults were horrified by the suggestive lyrics and exuberant styles – as well as their fear the music might bridge the gap between Black and White teens. In fact, for many it did – in 2010, Houston History editor Joe Pratt described how “the music of Little Richard and Chuck Berry and the amazing sound of Ray Charles” playing on Beaumont radio during his teens in the late fifties and early sixties encouraged him to question the alleged superiority of Whites in Jim Crow era Southeast Texas. As a result of his newly enlightened attitude, Pratt remembered, “A division grew steadily between my parents and me.”^v 

In the sixties, rock and roll, shortened to rock, rebounded after a brief downturn and showed itself to be more radical than parents had feared in the 1950s. First, for many teens, came the British Invasion led by The Beatles, who appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and at the Sam Houston Coliseum in downtown Houston the following year.^vi Teenagers became so struck with Beatlemania that the group remains a touchstone for popular music today.  

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The Beatles were one of the most influential musical groups in the 1960’s for teens including teenagers at Milby. In 1965, The Beatles had a show in Houston.

Milby Park was one of the most popular hangout spots for people at Milby High School. In 1970, the band KUBA held a concert in the park where many came to watch.

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