Time Line: The Court and Basic Rights

Around 1910, Alexander J. McKelway wrote a Declaration of Dependence on behalf of the children of America: "That childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which are freedom from toil for daily bread; the right to play and to 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." McKelway could look neither to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights for language defining the rights of children. Indeed, he would have searched in vain in the supreme laws of the land even to find a definition of "child."

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