Coming of Age in Elite Families, c. 1200–c. 1650

Access to wealth and privileged status lent the youth culture of the aristocracies of Western Europe a distinctive flavor in the medieval and early modern periods. Issues touching wardship, property rights, and the transmission of lands between generations gave adults a vested interest in supervising the young in adolescence, and in educating them for the responsibilities of governing estates and making marriages that were, ideally, closely aligned to dynastic interests. Like adolescents from other social backgrounds, fledgling young lords and ladies were sometimes tempted into wayward behavior and rebelled in conduct, words, and deeds against their elders. Yet, common experiences and shared rites of passage among elite youth—such as undergoing military training on the part of boys and serving in great households and attending princely courts—offered young nobles a chance to socialize with one another. They experienced youthful companionship and enjoyed recreational activities together, including jousting, hawking, hunting, dancing, and making music. They also learned the intricacies surrounding courtship and love. In these ways, young men and women became acculturated into noble society.

The Garbage Offensive

In summer of 1969, the NY Young Lords launched an ambitious course of community-based protests, involving thousands of residents in East Harlem. They addressed many of the social problems underscored, but unsolved, by the War on Poverty. Their legendary “Garbage Offensive,” name in deference to the Tet Offensive of the Vietnamese, the group barricaded major throughways with East Harlem’s uncollected garbage. It exposed environmental racism and impugned city government for treating Puerto Ricans and Black Americans like garbage. It’s combination of urban guerrilla protest with sharp political messaging pressured politicians to respond, and poor sanitation services became a major issue in the run-up to the heated mayoral elections in November 1969. Although histories of the civil rights and black power movements are popularly understood within the framework of citizenship rights, the work of organizations like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords paint a portrait of struggle that is more composite. They show that the black movement set in motion an awakening of social consciousness wherein virtually no social issue escaped public scrutiny. The Young Lords’ campaigns established standards of decency in city services that expanded the definition of the common good and stretched our nation’s definition of democracy.