Dear friends,
Laurie Sanders, the co-executive director of Historic Northampton, reached out to me recently with a lead. A force of nature, Sanders is always collaborating on something worthwhile — whether it’s a show at A.P.E. Gallery or an old-fashioned fence-painting at Historic Northampton’s grounds downtown. (She’s also an accomplished naturalist, and her photographs often illustrate the Hitchcock Center’s Earth Matters column in Saturday’s paper.)
Sanders told me they were co-sponsoring a talk with Forbes Library by Florence historian Joe Manning, who’s tracked down the descendants of more than 350 children featured in photographs by Lewis Hine. On assignment as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine visited 32 states and the District of Columbia between 1908 to 1924 documenting children working in mines, mills, sweatshops and plantations. The images, now at the Library of Congress, are heartbreaking, and include 5- and 6-year-old newsboys, often shoeless, hawking the non-returnable papers they bought on spec. Sanders noted that Hine was here in Northampton in 1912 and also took photos in Easthampton, Williamsburg and Leeds.
Hine referred to these portraits as “detective work” and a century later, Manning has taken on that mantle, using genealogy to track down the children — and their descendants.
Manning has hit a roadblock in identifying the two Northampton newsboys on our cover and two Easthampton spinners in the story that follows; but at Easthampton High School, some of Kelley Brown’s AP U.S. History students will be working with Manning in his quest.
Given how much of history is dedicated to poring over the lives of the unrelatably rich and famous, I think there’s something remarkable about Manning’s efforts to honor quiet lives. I’m grateful to Sanders and Manning for sharing this important history with us.
Yours,
Katy
klukens@gazettenet.com