In 1915, my grandfather was eight years old. He had already been working as a cotton picker for several years and would only spend one more year attending school. He would teach himself to read and write later, in his teens. That same year, The Birth of a Nation, a racist film praised by the Ku Klux Klan, was shown on screens all over the country and was, in fact, the first movie ever to be shown in the White House.
