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Kodak Quotes

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Kodak Quotes

“Rochester became a magnet for African Americans in the twentieth century, one of many northern industrial cities that blacks flocked to during their six-decade-long Great Migration from the rural South. From 1950 to 1960, Rochester's total population had declined slightly, from about 332,000 to 319,000. But its black population had risen appreciably over the same period, tripling to nearly 24,000. Those who'd come to Smugtown were hungry for a better life. What they encountered upon their arrival, however, was mainly disappointment. Mirroring trends found across the country, many blacks in Rochester were forced to live in substandard housing as whites fled the urban core. The city's power structure remained almost exclusively white. And many blacks struggled to find decent jobs. Even though the unemployment rate in Rochester had fallen to about 2 percent in the summer of 1964, 14 percent of blacks were counted as without work. The big Kodak dollar and the lawn sprinklers of the suburbs have seemed both tantalizingly near and hopelessly far to the inner-city man," said an African American barber.”

JobsUnionsRochesterKodak
Book:The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America
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“In 1962 the president of the American Historical Association, Carl Bridenbaugh, warned his colleagues that human existence was undergoing a “Great Mutation”—so sudden and so radical “that we are now suffering something like historical amnesia.” He lamented the decline of reading; the distancing from nature (which he blamed in part on “ugly yellow Kodak boxes” and “the transistor radio everywhere”); and the loss of shared culture.”

RadioKodak1962TeotwawkiCarl Bridenbaugh
Book:The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
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“Much like GM and GE, Kodak had a fair employment policy in place by the 1960s and had laid out is own Plan for Progress, which included a commitment to “hold discussions with the employment interviewers in the various division to remind them: that “such things as race, creed, color, or national origin” are neither to “help nor hinder in getting a job at Kodak.” Yet for blacks trying to work and move up at the company, these assurances didn’t mesh with their own experiences. Some of this was a consequence of blacks being poorly educated, especially those who had relocated to Rochester from the rural South. In the company’s eyes, the simply weren’t qualified. “We don’t grow many peanuts in Eastman Kodak,” Monroe Dill, Kodak’s industrial relations director said in 1963, adding that the company would start to recruit more from all-black colleges so as to not keep “discriminating by omission.” But there was also plenty of discrimination by commission, as individual Kodak managers used their discretion to hire whomever they liked and cast off whomever they didn’t. “They would say it blatant, like, 'We don't have any colored jobs,"" recalled Clarence Ingram, who served as general manager of the Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation, an entity formed after the '64 riots to support minority businesses. "They would tell you that." Apparently, they told a lot of blacks that. In 1964, only about 600 African Americans worked for Kodak in Rochester. less than 2 percent of the 33,000 employees based there. Determined to remedy this was FIGHT, which was led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Florence, the thirty-one-year-old pastor of the Reynolds Street Church of Christ, a stocky, hard-charging, charismatic man, who called Malcolm X a friend. On September 2, 1966, a delegation of sixteen from FIGHT walked into Kodak's executive suite. Florence, sporting a Black Power button in his lapel, said he wanted to see "the top man." Before he knew it, the minister and his retinue were sitting in front of three top men: Kodak chairman Albert Chapman, president William Vaughn, and executive vice president Louis Eilers. Florence told them about the harshness of life in Rochester's black ghetto and said he wanted Kodak to start a training program for people who normally wouldn't be recruited into the company. Florence braced himself, expecting Kodak to resist. But Vaughn listened carefully and then asked Florence to submit a more specific proposal. Two weeks later, he did. Calling FIGHT " the only mass based organization of poor people and near poor people in the Rochester area," Florence requested that Kodak train 500 to 600 men and women over eighteen months. FIGHT also wanted direct involvement in the process; the group would "recruit and counsel trainees and offer advice, consultation, and assistance.”

RaceFightKodak
Book:The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America
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“I called it Kinko’s because of my nickname — because I had this really kinky hair. If you think about it, the first thing a baby learns is ‘Googoo, gaga,’ and if you think of good businesses like Kodak, Xerox, Google, people remember consonants — which was why Kinko’s was a good name. But really I had this big head of curly hair and before being called ‘Kinko’ I was ‘Pube Head.’ So I thought Kinko’s was better than Pubo’s.”

PeopleIfsThinkingFirstsBigsRememberNamesHairBabyGoogleNicknamesGood BusinessKinkyGagaConsonantsBig HeadsXeroxCurly HairKodakKinky Hair
Author:Paul Orfalea
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“Even a fellow with a camera has his favourite subjects, as we can see looking through the Kodak-albums of our friends. One amateur prefers the family group, another bathing scenes, another cows upon an alp, or kittens held upside down in the arms of a black-faced child. The tendency to choose one subject rather than another indicates the photographer's temperament. Nevertheless, his passion is for photography rather than for selection, a kitten will serve when no cows are available.”

ChildrenPassionBlackGroupsSubjectsArmsScenePhotographyCamerasFellowsPhotographerAlbumsAvailableTendenciesCowsFavouriteNeverthelessSelectionTemperamentUpside DownKittenBathingAlpsKodak
Author:E. M. Forster
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“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face. At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only thirteen people. Where did all those jobs disappear to? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?”

PeopleFirstsTodayJobsFacesChallengesWealthCompanyClassHappenedMiddleExamplePhotographyCamerasDollarsCurrentsDisappearBillionsHeightMiddle ClassDigitalEmployedInstagramChallenges We FaceDigital CamerasNew FacesDigital PhotographyKodak
Author:Jaron Lanier
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