Data in Social Context

Abstract

It’s 1911, and the picture illustrates a controversial era in U.S. history. Photographer Lewis Hine captured the portrait inside a Roanoke cotton mill as part of a series on child labor in the early 20th century. He listed the names of the two boys — Frank Robinson and Ronald Webb — along with their ages as a way to highlight the humanity of children forced to work in factories. For Virginia Tech students in a recent Introduction to Data in Social Context course, taught by Department of History Professor E. Thomas Ewing, the images served as a launching point for in-depth research that drew the attention of the Library of Congress. Eleven teams, each composed of nine students, investigated the people named in each photo caption. In addition, the teams studied the scope of child labor, policies created to address the practice, and the implications of how public organizations and state and federal government agencies responded. Students pored over primary sources, such as census records, labor statistics, and news stories. They researched the names listed on the captions to learn more about the individuals and families depicted in the photographs. The project team assigned to research the photograph of the two boys in Roanoke found a death certificate from 1916 indicating that Frank Robinson, pictured on the left, died of typhoid fever at age 13. In preparation for the course, Ewing, who is also the associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, contacted the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division to discuss how students were using open access digital resources.