by the Children of American Mines and Factories and Workshops Assembled.
WHEREAS, We the Children of America, are declared to have been born free and equal, and
WHEREAS, We are yet in bondage in this land of the free; are forced to toil the long day or the long night, with no control over the conditions of labor, as to health or safety or hours or wages, and with no right to the rewards of our services, there for be it,
RESOLVED, I--That childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which are freedom from toil for daily bread; the right to play and dream; the right to the normal sleep of the night season; the right to an education, that we may have equality of opportunity for developing all that there is in us of mind and heart.
RESOLVED, II--That we declare ourselves to be helpless and depdendentl that we are and of right ought to be dependent, and that we hereby present the appeal of our helplessness that we may be protected in the enjoyment of our rights of childhood.
RESOLVED, III--That we demand the restoration of our rights by the abolition of child labor in America.
--Alexander J. McKelway, 1913
Of particular interest in this manifesto is "the right to play and dream." The myth of childhood, or the state that is childhood, brings up peculiar questions of what it means to be human and be civilized. How often does serious political theater contain such language? The creators of the amendment to protect children were beautiful idealists. Too bad it never got footing. Like ERA decades later, the grandness of the amendment would be watered down by practical interstate agreements. Missed opportunities.
Alexander J. McKelway, a minister from Pennsylvania and coordinator of the southern arm of the National Child Labor Committee, was responsible for the creation of the United States Children's Bureau. He was a brilliant, sensitive speaker, and a passionate progressive.
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| Alexander J. McKelway, 1866-1918 |
But not all of this was rosy. Though often considered a radical, his work in the South was only possible because of his insistence on his insistence on the racial supremacy of "native whites." At best, his efforts in regards to "the Negro" were paternalistic perhaps even compassionate, but all backed with a hierarchical sense of "burden." At its worst, his rhetoric argued that the white race was at risk of obliteration by the industrial exploitation of its children, their lack of education, nutrition and general well being. The white race be relied on as "the masterful race" if it couldn't help itself. What would happen to "the poor Negro" if their benefactors weren't allowed to thrive? McKelway argued in ways the white southerner might feel obliged to give a nod to. He was thus responsible for many of the civilized changes that occurred throughout the South in regards to child welfare. Only in retrospect we might ask, at what cost? (Trattner, 85)
What's frightening is to think about is how far we've come, yet how much the very fabric of our society still supports itself on subtle racial algebra (not to mention the resurgence of overt classical American bigotry since the beginning of the Obama presidency and Twitter). Two steps forward one, or more, back.
I studied cinematography in my teens and twenties and was quite set on becoming a filmmaker. One of my instructors, filmmaker Tony Buba, taught us about film stock and processing from the ground up. Some of our gear came from George A. Romero's production company, and we were thrilled to set our Bolexes on tripods that had been on the set of Night of The Living Dead. Learning film stocks is very technical. Early on Buba showed us a 16 millimeter color negative film test. Projected on the screen was, first, a Macbeth color chart and gray scale, followed by a thirty second shot of a woman. Buba pointed out an obvious fact: the woman was white. Though over the years the model had changed, the girls who modeled for the camera were referred to as "The Kodak Lady,"or "China Girls." An introduction into how institutional racism works, how deeply a point of view can be ingrained in how a society sees itself.
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| Kodak Test/Kodak Lady |
Kodak, unremarkably, balanced their hues to maximize Caucasian skin tones. Buba is an amazing documentarian and outspoken activist. He's also a good teacher. The image of the Kodak lady was meaningful, not just in terms of tungsten vs daylight. She was a litmus for something heavier: biases buried so deep in our infrastructure to be taken entirely for granted.
There was no alarm in this, just a slow dawning: the world as I knew it atomizing beneath my feet. If such basic, utilitarian nuts and bolts of a culture began with such bias, there would be little room for saccharine daydreaming. Such a heavy thing to think about when watching Star Wars. A good argument for social realism and the documentary. It's always the things we take for granted that are the most dangerous.
The fiction I write operates on the premise of "the lie that tells the truth." Perhaps the tension between the day dream, the escape, and not shying away from the ugliness of what's in front of us is an ongoing theme. A balance of gravity and levity. As drama critic, John Lahr (son of the Cowardly Lion, Bert Lahr), famously said, "Frivolity is the species refusal to suffer."
Trattner, Walter I. Crusade for The Children, A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970.
