Bebop Wars! Drape Pants, Ducktail Haircuts and Communism Threatened Milwaukee in 1950

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Examples of the ducktails hairstyle, which was deemed “freakish” by Milwaukee authorities in 1950.

Any panic in Milwaukee over rock and roll was still a few years away in 1950, when the “bebop” trend swept the city’s schools. But the very vocal worrying over bebop—most significantly fears of race-mixing and teenage delinquency—presaged many of the concerns that dogged the popular rise of rock in the mid-1950s. And the battle against the bebop trend would be just one of many waged against local young people as they tried to find their way in post-war America.

The bebop situation came to a head in November 1950, when the Milwaukee archdiocese threatened to expel any student who refused to give up the bebop look. Beboppers, as so defined for this “crisis,” were mostly identified by fashion. “Beboppers can detected by their dress [and] freakish haircuts,” wrote the Milwaukee Journal. The boys of the set wore their hair long or in the “duck tail” style and dressed in sport coats and high-waisted drape pants. The girls wore army field jackets, long skirts and babushkas.

Criminality, foul language and a general disrespect for authority were the supposed manifestations of the bebopper’s personality. In a sermon at Milwaukee’s Emanuel Presbyterian church, Minister Andrew Finnie said that beboppers were “sick personalities” who had strayed from the teachings of God. Many local schools moved to ban the clothing—particularly jackets with supposed gang emblems—associated with the bebop trend.

Rumors of an “inner ring” of bebop gang members also circulated. It was said that this secret group contained as many as 500 young people. Word had it that girls wishing to join were forced into “illicit relations” with African Americans and members had to take a “miss a mass” pledge to skip church at least once a month. The clergy blamed the absence of religion in schools. Other blamed the “push-button” age for making life so much easier than it had been in generations past. Oddly enough, bebop music—the popular style of jazz music that had started the fashion trend in the first place—was hardly mentioned.

But the most alarming claim by bebop opponents was the alleged connection to Communism. This was based on nothing more than a single incident, in which literature from the Young Progressives of America (a group once associated with the Young Communists League) condemning local press coverage of beboppers was found near two local high schools. Many people had no problem making the enormous leap that tied Communism to the ducktail haircut. In a piece dedicated entirely to the bebop controversy, Milwaukee Journal advice columnist Ione Quinby Griggs advised young Milwaukeeans that there was nothing wrong with the bebop dress, but warned that “clothes can be like badges. Would you wear a badge that proclaims you to be a communist? Of course you wouldn’t. But Communists have influenced a number of kids who dress like beboppers and are trying to influence all of them.”

At the height of bebop panic, a commission assembled by Mayor Frank Zeidler to investigate the matter produced a surprisingly well-reasoned report that largely dismissed the uproar. There was no proof, they determined, that any such “inner ring” of beboppers existed and criminality among kids in bebop dress was limited to a few troubled individuals. Nor did they find that Communists had any, or were trying to have any, influence over the group.

“We are inclined to believe that beboppers are, to a very large extent, unhappy adolescent young people who have been denied something they should have but cannot secure,” the commission wrote. “Antisocial group action gives thwarted youths a feeling of security which they miss in their individual lives. By striking back at society in such manner, they compensate for what their homes and communities have failed to provide for them.” The commission said empathically that banning bebop clothing would do nothing to address the larger issues affecting the city’s young people.

As for the claims of white girls being lured into relationship with black boys, the commission found that groups of beboppers were often mixed-race and that bebop parties occasionally did involve drugs and alcohol. But the girls involved wished to be in such groups. The commission found that Milwaukee’s black community was too often the scapegoat for the misdeeds of white children, particularly girls. “Parents are not warranted in blaming the presence of a colored population in the community for the difficulties in which their girls become involved.”

Shortly thereafter, the panic over bebop in Milwaukee began to fade. It passed away not unlike the fashion trend that it opposed, but the underlying insecurities that it caused—over juvenile delinquency, over Communism, and over “race-mixing”—would live on. Just as the pains of being a teenager that drove kids to bebop would live on.