Play Week

A WWI-era children’s recreation campaign, instigated by the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense to save children from the “wartime hazards of increased delinquency, overtaxed nerves, and weakened bodies,” resulted in a national Children’s Patriotic Play Week, held during the first week of September 1918. In New Orleans, naturally that provided an opportunity to have a couple parades.

Representatives from many children’s organizations participated in the planning and production of Play Week. Neighborhood city playgrounds were an especially important partner. As the Playgrounds and Recreation Association of America stressed while explaining that able bodies were needed for future war efforts: “To be strong for victory, the nation must let her children play.”

Play Week opened on Sunday, Sept. 1, with a flower parade at City Park. Each city playground presented at least three mini-floats; all 40 floats depicted people and events making up the history of America. 

Monday-Friday activities were held at Audubon and City Parks and included sports, folk dancing, kite flying, storytelling, swimming and Boy and Girl Scouts exhibitions. Friday ended with a pageant called “Light and Shadow” that highlighted the health differences between children who play outdoors in fresh air and sunshine versus “the child[ren] of toil and poor environment” who become “slaves of ignorance, greed, and fatigue.”

The opening day parade at City Park featured gaily decorated floats constructed on bicycles and carts, some of which were pulled by well-groomed (and well-behaved) goats. This goat had a sign attached to his harness that reads: “The goat that will get the kaiser’s goat.”

Play Week closed with a children’s parade on Saturday, Sept 7. Preliminary plans included having a Pied Piper impersonator to lead the children, but come parade day, the children were led by a different sort of music: military and police bands. Children in various costumes, most in a patriotic theme, represented every playground in the city. 

While the city was hoping for upwards of 10,000 parading children, the actual number was about 1,000. This was largely because the Saturday afternoon time parade time meant that most children over 14 were at work, filling in for adult workers who were fighting overseas. 

The uptown children started near Calliope and St. Charles, while the downtown kids came from Esplanade and Rampart. They met at Elks Place, merrily marched down Canal as one group, and disbanded when they arrived at Lafayette Square.