America's Founding Era Divides Generations More Than Any Political Line

Forty-eight percent of the Silent Generation named American independence from Britain as one of the three most historically impactful events shaping the country today. Among Generation Z, that figure drops to 8 percent. The gap is wider than any divide measured along racial lines, and wider still than the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans on the same question.

That striking contrast sits at the center of a report from the Johns Hopkins SNF Agora Institute and the nonprofit Millions of Conversations, released as the United States prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of its founding. The research draws on a nationally representative survey of U.S. citizens conducted in December 2022, followed by a quantitative follow-up with 300 participants in January 2025 and in-depth interviews with 12 individuals asked to reflect on the broader findings.

What People Admire - and When They Were Born

The study asked respondents to identify the social movements and historical figures that had the most positive impact on America. Responses sorted themselves not primarily by ideology or race, but by generation. Older Americans gravitated toward figures who shaped the republic's earliest decades - George Washington led the rankings among Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. Younger respondents admired the icons of 20th-century civil rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks scored highest among Gen Z, who also ranked Black Lives Matter among the top movements.

The LGBT rights movement emerged as a generational marker in the opposite direction. Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X rated it highly; Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation did not. Across the entire sample, independence-era movements were cited by 28 percent of Baby Boomers versus 14 percent of Millennials and just 8 percent of Gen Z respondents.

"We tend to think a lot about political polarization, but the differences between generations are larger than partisan gaps," said SNF Agora Senior Fellow Peter Pomerantsev, a lead author of the study. "And the divide we're seeing may not really be about history. Origin stories and contemporary issues are important to identity. Layer on top of that a politicized discourse, and these movements become a kind of badge people wear."

The Media Diet Problem

Where people get their historical knowledge amplifies the generational divide. Gen Z and Millennials turn to YouTube first; the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers rely on books and documentaries. There is almost no overlapping media environment where someone born in 1945 and someone born in 2000 encounter the same account of the same event. Without a shared text - a common documentary, a shared classroom experience, a television series watched by millions simultaneously - the chance of forming a shared historical interpretation shrinks considerably.

"How do you get the Silent Generation talking to Gen Zers when they have no forum where they come together and no common TV that they watch together?" Pomerantsev asked. "We need to focus on facilitating dialogue across transgenerational divides."

That absence of common media is not merely a sociological observation. The researchers treat it as an active mechanism - one that feeds polarization not through misinformation, but through diverging frames of reference that never collide and never get tested against each other.

Where Agreement Survives

The report also identifies robust areas of consensus. The Civil Rights Movement appeared in the top three most-admired events across every generation surveyed, as did women's suffrage. Agreement on these movements held even across political lines.

A more subtle finding involved the language of controversy. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they opposed Critical Race Theory. When the researchers described the theory's core claims without naming them, nearly 60 percent agreed with those same statements. The label had become a political trigger that the underlying idea had not.

"If you get below the surface of propaganda language, you can find your way to audiences," Pomerantsev said. "And there is more of a chance of people listening to one another than TV commentary would make you think."

The in-depth interviews reinforced this. Participants expressed frustration with division and a genuine desire to overcome it. They were drawn to historical examples where Americans collaborated toward a collective goal - the wartime industrial mobilization, the moon program, disaster relief organizing.

250 Years and a Question of Authorship

The report lands at a moment of particular institutional sensitivity. Debates over school curricula have made American history an explicit political battleground over the past several years. State legislatures have passed laws restricting how certain historical episodes can be taught; school boards have convened emergency sessions over textbook choices. Against that backdrop, the findings carry specific weight: the very era being celebrated in the 250th anniversary is also the era that divides Americans most sharply by generation.

"Anniversaries are a time to reflect on a shared history, but America is struggling to have a common story," Pomerantsev said. "With that in mind, it becomes particularly salient to think about what stories will be told and who will tell them."

Samar Ali, co-founder of Millions of Conversations and co-author of the report, framed the challenge in terms of belonging. "What does it mean to belong in America today? This is the question most Americans are grappling with and are craving to find an answer they can identify with."

Limitations

The initial survey was conducted in December 2022, and attitudes may have shifted across a politically eventful three years. The follow-up quantitative survey covered only 300 people, limiting statistical precision on subgroup comparisons. The 12 in-depth interviews represent a small sample that should not be over-interpreted. The study also did not measure whether cross-generational conversations about history actually change attitudes - only that Americans say they want them.