Black Newsboy in St. Louis

MORNINGS ON MAPLE STREET

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Black Newsboy in St. Louis

Black newsboy, St. Louis, Missouri, 1910. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Truants selling papers at Jefferson & Washington 11 A.M. Monday May 9th, 1910. Smallest boy is Marvin Adams, 2637 Wahington Ave. Said he got his papers "off'n de other feller." Other boy is Owen McCormack, 2651 Washington Avenue. Location: St. Louis, Missouri, Lewis Hine.

According to the 1910 census, Owen and Marvin are white, so the black newsboy is "de other feller." African-American children are rarely shown in Lewis Hine's child labor photos. The most widely accepted explanation for this is that even child labor jobs, as undesirable as they seem now, were available almost exclusively to whites. One has to wonder why the unknown boy here was not named, while the other two boys were. I offer one possible reason: the white boys may have felt more comfortable giving their names to Lewis Hine, who was also white.

Who is this anonymous newsboy?

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