Exciting Event with Black Man and Blue Paint

by Alastair Johnston

Bill Traylor, Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Delmonico Books / Prestel, 2012, 112 pp., cloth in d.j.)

A new book about Bill Traylor is cause for celebration, just as seeing any new work from this artist is a marvel. Back in the middle of the last century the big dogs of French art, Picasso, Dubuffet and co, were trying hard to forget their art school training and paint like children. The new appreciation for self-taught artists didn't catch on in the USA, however.

In the 1940s, Charles Shannon, the man who rescued Traylor's work from oblivion, took it to New York but was rebuffed by the museums and galleries there. In the intervening decades the art has not changed, while the American art world's attitude to outsider artists, like Ramirez, Darger and Traylor, definitely has.

"Would the Modern have been a different place if it had had 16 Traylors in its collection for the last 60 years? It's impossible to know, but one likes to think that they would have worked their magic on some of its curators." — Roberta Smith, "Altered Views in the House of Modernism," The New York Times, 29 April 2005 (quoted on p. 11)

But then curators and critics have always followed rather than led the art market, so folks who make millions selling real estate or faded denim pants can amass boring collections of "blue-chip art" (usually a euphemism for gilded equine ordure), then have a museum wing dedicated to their efforts and foist it off on the undiscerning public. 

Bill Traylor, "Untitled" ca. 1939-42, pencil & colored pencil on cardboard, 22 x 14 ins. (High Museum of Art)

Wait, how did I get here? Let's go back to the artist at hand. Bill Traylor was born a slave. Yes, such people still existed in relatively modern times. After "emancipation" he continued to work as a stable hand for his former owner until old age crept up on him. He moved to the city, and ended up on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, in 1929, during the Depression, when he was in his mid-70s. Like Oliver Twist, he slept in a funeral parlor. He spent his days on the street, drawing and painting on scraps of scavenged cardboard. By chance, Charles Shannon (not the Charles Shannon who was Charles Ricketts' boyfriend and whose bulldog crapped behind Gertrude Stein's couch), a young white artist (himself an outsider in the black community), saw Traylor at work and started buying his paintings, giving him poster paints and supplies.

By 1939 Traylor had rheumatic pains in his hands, but still managed to create at least 1200 art works in the next 4 years. When Shannon gave him new poster board, Traylor set it aside for a spell to "cure," so that it would acquire rips and stains like the old discarded poster backs he liked to use, responding to the "smudges, cracks, stains and the irregular shapes" they contained in his drawing (p. 32). Despite their broad appeal his images are not cute and delightful in a decorative way, but rather uneasy and show a lot of fearfulness. A bird (chicken?) eyes a giant bug; men party and drink but they are standing on a very precipitous roof. He portrayed his own world, but parallels can be seen to the work of Chagall early or Matisse late.

Bill Traylor, "Figures, Construction" ca. 1940-2, watercolor & graphite on cardboard, 13 x 7 ins. (Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts)

Then in 1942 Shannon was drafted into the army. Traylor visited his family in Detroit but lost a leg to gangrene. Any further work he did in the remaining 7 years of his life has been lost. He died in a nursing home.

Some of his surviving work, which Shannon took to New York, was even offered to the major dealers in Outsider art. Frank Maresca & Roger Ricco hesitated and missed the boat, as they ruefully noted in Bill Traylor: his art, his life (Knopf, 1991), which includes a long interview with Shannon. Fortunately, two collections of Traylor's surviving art ended up being donated to two museums: the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (35 drawings) and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (31 drawings) who sponsored this joint exhibition and catalogue of their holdings.

Since the outlines of Traylor's life have been given in earlier monographs, this catalogue focuses on the condition and conservation of the surviving work, mostly done in fugitive media such as wax crayon or poster paint on acidic recycled cardboard, all of which are archivally problematic.

The soundtrack to Traylor's life would have been Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives, Duke Ellington, Erskine Hawkins, and the rural blues of Alabama and the Mississippi delta, as Phil Patton pointed out in his catalogue essay "High Singing Blue" (New York, Hirschl & Adler Modern, 1997, which was reprinted in the essential Deep Blues catalogue, Yale University Press, 1999). The blues are deep and moody, but Traylor opted for a bright cobalt blue that truly electrifies some of his paintings. 

Bill Traylor, "Untitled" ca. 1939-42, poster paint & pencil on cardboard, 13.25 x 7.25 ins. (High Museum of Art)

Many commentators and curators have tried to explain the symbolism of Traylor's work through references to Voudou ("Dancing man in top hat" as Baron Samedi?), African cosmology, the plantation, jazz & blues improvisation, and so forth. This new book suggests in a more down-to-earth way, that many of the abstract shapes can be explained by the environment of downtown Montgomery. Fred Baron and Jeffrey Wolf (in the key essay here) explain the allusions to a monumental fountain, a large 4-faced clock, and the capitol building that recur as abstract motifs in Traylor's work. In one image (shown in Deep Blues, cat no 37) a man is seen toting the "fountain" on his back, to remind us that so much was constructed "off the backs of blacks," as Linton Kwesi Johnson put it.

Bill Traylor, "Untitled" ca. 1939-42, poster paint & pencil on cardboard, 13 x 11.25 ins. (High Museum of Art)

Traylor's paintings are narratives, but they also enact rituals, like the cave painters in the Dordogne Valley who visualized the aurochs getting speared before they went out to hunt it. Snakes, owls, dogs, men with sticks, thieves, cripples, attack dogs, smokers & drinkers, populate his imagery. His work is untitled (mainly because he could barely write) but Shannon added titles, calling quite a few of them "Exciting event." (Exciting event with keg," "Exciting event with animals," "Brown house with exciting event," "Exciting event: blue man, snake.") This new book is another "Exciting event" — with visionary black man and blue paint.

The production of the hardback catalogue is exemplary, from the design by Zach Hooker to the typesetting, to the printing by Shenzhen in China.
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Vile Rarities From the Archives of the American Right-Wing

by Stephen J. Gertz

WARNING: This post contains highly disturbing images containing commensurate text. 

Once upon a time (for this truly seems like a fairy tale), the Right and Left wings in the United States had homes in both the main political parties. While the Republican Party teemed with rabid, ugly, and bigoted anti-Communists, the Democratic Party was host to rabid, ugly, bigoted segregationists. And then there were the Right-Wingers who'd flown so far to the Right that they flew out of the mainstream and into fringe parties of particular nastiness.

The campaign brochure above heralds the contentious 1930 Alabama elections, in which a number of Ku Klux Klan-funded Democrats broke away from the party to run as Independents. The Independents lost, and the event marked a pivotal moment in the consolidation of old-line Democratic power in the state, which would go unchallenged until the Civil Rights conflicts of the Sixties.

This illustrated brochure, produced by  main-line Democrats, was intended to show that, despite rejection of KKK backing, the Party remained staunch in its support of the principle of White Supremacy. Page one provides brief text and lists members of the Party’s Executive Committee and Honorary Vice Chairmen (among whom was future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black). The remaining three pages reproduce ten captioned political caricatures lampooning the campaign tactics of the apostate Democrats and the Republicans. An unusual item; not located in OCLC.

The Democratic Party Is Calling You! [Birmingham]: Democratic State Campaign Committee, [1930]. Quarto (28cm). Single sheet, folded to four newsprint pages. 

Marilyn R. Allen's Caucasian quo vadis, White Man! What of the Night? (1959) is an anti-integration tract by the author best-known for her 1949 inspirational, spiritually uplifting  opus, Alien Races and Mongrelization: “...since the Warren Court’s communistic race-mixing decision was admittedly NOT based in and on the Constitution (nor on precedent), but on alien socialistic doctrine and Organized Minority pressure, it is therefore null and void.” Not located in OCLC.

ALLEN, Marilyn R. White Man! What of the Night? Salt Lake City: By the author, [1959]. Gate-fold leaflet, 15cm x 14cm. Single sheet folded to six newsprint pages.

It wouldn't be a party without the American Nazi Party spiking the punch with their  brand of poison. Here, the National Socialist White People’s Party,  successor to George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, descries Special Rights for Black Savages. Insert homosexual, feminist, Jewish, etc. for the full Party platform. This recruiting broadside for the NSWPP states its headquarters address as 2507 North Franklin Road, Arlington, VA, where the group moved following the assassination of Rockwell.

Special Rights For Black Savages? Arlington, VA: National Socialist White People’s Party, N.d. [post- 1968]. Broadside, 11” x 8.5”, printed recto only on newsprint. 

 

This broadside from the good ol' folks of the Fighting American Nationalists simulates a typical “Wanted” poster, depicting an African-American in caricature; the subject here is identified as “Levi Coon.” Alias “Jigaboo, Baboon, Ape....he has been known to be led by communist Jews in a conspiracy to destroy America and the White race. He is believed to be armed with a razor, a gas bomb, a Star of David, and a bottle of Sweet Lucy wine.” The Manischevitz winery was surely relieved by their exclusion from this arsenal imagined by the malignantly asinine.

This is one of the more horrific pieces of racist propaganda you'll ever encounter. The “Fighting American Nationalists” was a  hate group reputedly established by George Lincoln Rockwell in the mid-1960s as a front for the American Nazi Party.

WHITE, C. Wanted Dead Or Alive. Hendersonville, NC: Fighting American Nationalists, 1975. Broadside, 11” x 8-1/2” (ca. 28 x 22cm). Printed recto-only on a single sheet of standard xerographic paper.

If the recto headline above doesn't get you right here, the verso headline will: “Scientists Say Negro Still In Ape Stage - Races Positively Not Equal.”

Edward R. Fields' scurrilous junk science screed was issued by The Thunderbolt, the official organ of the National States Rights Party, a neo-Nazi group active in the mid-1960s. This organ desperately needs a transplant; it is diseased, a thunderbolt that Zeus rejected and speared into the garbage can, only to be retrieved by ignorant, bottom-feeding mortals and thrust into the soul of America.

Here, the standard pseudo-scientific tropes are proffered regarding Negro inferiority (reduced brain size; prognathous jaw; prehensile toes, etc). It concludes: “As the black genes of the Negro are more powerful than white genes - the Negro has thereby destroyed every white civilization that he has come in contact with or has left that civilization stagnant and rotting and dependent upon the last drop of white blood from outside to keep it going. Mongrelization of the Races Would Destroy White Christian Civilization.” It also includes a brief discourse on the “Two-toed Vadoma Tribe,” whose members can “run like the wind, scale trees.” Not located in OCLC (this screed, not the Vadoma tribe, which lives in the western region of Zimbabwe and whose members, indeed, have a congenital foot disfigurement).

There's a silver lining to this toxic cloud.  Black-Americans can take cold comfort in knowing that, by its own statement, the National States Rights Party believed that Negroes were biologically superior to Whites, with super-duper DNA that overwhelms all others. Curiously, the National States Right Party appears to have accepted evolution and Darwin's The Descent of Man. At the time, however, anti-science had yet to be added to the far-Right's anti-everything list.

Given the caliber of white people addressed here Black-Americans would surely prefer to be related to apes. I'm white and proud to be descended from apes; they have more dignity. I'll take King Kong over King Cotton's DNA anytime.

FIELDS, Edward R. The Negro Is Related to Apes -- Not White People. Marietta, GA: The Thunderbolt, Inc., N.d. [ca 1964-5]. Quarto broadside (36cm), printed in black ink on both sides of a standard ledger-sized sheet. With four illustrations.

The National States Rights Party's Most Important Program  planned for the deportation of American Blacks to the African continent, noting that “...African nations could receive the entire Negro population of the United States within twenty years, without disproportionate strain on any one nation...” Also includes a draft “Back To Africa Law,” calling for stripping all Negroes of American citizenship; cash bonuses for those volunteering to emigrate; and forcible deportation of those unwilling to volunteer. The National States Rights Party was a neo-Nazi group founded in 1958 and active through the early Seventies. Theirs  was a very short-sighted scheme. Who'd they think was going to perform all the low-class menial labor that poor white trash felt was beneath them?  C'mon, people! Geesh!

SMITH, Drew L. How To Ship Negroes Back To Africa. Marietta, GA: National States Rights Party, N.d. [ca 1964-65].  Printed folio circular (ca 36cm x 22cm). Single sheet folded to four pages.

When racism and rabid anti-Communism get together the results are always a joyful expression of self-realization for the zealously righteous, revealing a breathtaking psychopathology usually associated with  the anti-Christ in Jesus' robe. The above graphic reproduces a photograph of Martin Luther King, Abner W. Berry, Aubrey Williams, and Myles Horton in a classroom of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The text identifies these subjects, calling them the “four horsemen of racial agitation...[who] have brought tension, disturbance, strife and violence in the advancement of the Communist doctrine of ‘racial nationalism.’”

The Highlander Folk School was founded by Don West and Myles Horton in 1953 as a training facility for southern civil rights workers; it was the frequent and favorite subject of attacks from anti-integrationists. The present broadside, issued under the auspices of the Georgia Commission on Education, is similar to another, larger broadside of the same ilk print-signed by Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin. OCLC notes only two locations (CSU Sacramento & Historic New Orleans Collection).

Martin Luther King...At Communist Training School. [Athens, GA]: Georgia Commission on Education. N.d. (ca 1957). Broadside, printed recto-only on a single legal-size sheet (ca 36cm x 22cm). Thirteen lines of text and central graphic.

• • •

A funny thing happened to Right-wing Democrats on their way to the lynching. Before the ink was dry on President Johnson's signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they mentally bolted from the Party and, in 1968, with Presidential candidate Richard M.. Nixon taking advantage of their profound discontent, ran into the Republican Party's open arms and warm embrace where they and their heirs have remained  cozy and  happy ever after though perpetually disgruntled; chronic lip-service, from  wiser Party leaders who seduce for the Presidential nomination, abandon for the election  and then pragmatically lead the country from only center-right, has been their bitter reward for loyalty. Now, fed-up and having driven traditional mainstream Republicans out of the Party to become the new Republican base, they, along with what was once the Republican far-Right fringe, are the true RINOs,  Republicans In Name Only.  It's a another great, albeit strange and deeply ironic, Only in America story.

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All images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks. Mr. Bair is a specialist in the history, literature, and art of American social movements including the radical politics of both poles; the Left-wing falls under his purview, as well. Bair is one of the go-to rare booksellers for students, collectors, and curators interested in this subject.
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Has the American Left-wing  published odious agitprop? Of course. But though stinky, it is rarely, if ever, as blatantly and shamelessly hateful. And it is almost always designed better.

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The Day Boxing's Jack Johnson Put Dada Surrealism on Dreamstreet

surreal by Stephen J. Gertz

Note Johnson in tuxedo.

On April 23, 1916, Jack Johnson, the former Heavyweight boxing champion of the world in exile in Europe after fleeing conviction for violating the White-Slave Traffic Act (aka the Mann Act), went mano a mano with modern art.

His nominal opponent was Arthur Cravan née Fabian Lloyd, an Englishman born and educated in Switzerland, who claimed to be the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a professional boxer, singer, art critic, poet - you name it. Living in Paris, he was a performance artist before the genre existed, the subject and theme of his art being himself. Creating a public spectacle was the reason he got out of bed each morning, and once on his feet was a walking happening.

From 1911-1915 Cravan published Maintenant, a literary review that lasted for only five issues but had enormous influence upon the young artists and intellectuals who had come together in Paris and were on the cusp of changing the world.

Maintenant no. 3, October-November 1915.

Cravan brazenly caused sensation wherever he went, whatever he did. In an article in Maintenant about the arts salon of 1912 he explicitly and graphically asserted that a portrait of artist Marie Laurencin suggested to him that she needed a good screwing, an opinion that her lover, poet and literateur Guillaume Apollonaire, took issue with. He challenged Cravan to a duel.

Absurdity, the ridiculous, the eccentric, the striking, the outrageous, and the shocking  were Cravan's bread and butter. His identity was whatever he decided it would be; long before Madonna made self-invention and re-invention standard operating procedure, Cravan practiced it with a vengeance. It is no wonder, then, that Cravan became the darling of Dadaists Marcel Duchamps, Andre Breton, and Francis Picabia.

In 1916, he was desperate to get to the United States (dodging conscription into the French army was nearly a full-time occupation), had moved to Barcelona and fallen in with its colony of French avant-garde artists in exile, and needed money. Whose notion it was to stage a match with Jack Johnson remains unclear but Cravan's fingerprints are all over the patently wacko and divinely nonsensical idea.

Arthur Cravan by Jean-Paul-Louis L'Espoir.

And so, "In early 1916, a frenzied group of fight promoters gathered in Barcelona to organize what promised to be a 'sensational encounter' between former world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (the famous black fighter who was living in Europe, a fugitive from his native land because of charges of having violated the Mann Act) and Arthur Cravan, an outspoken, notoriously eccentric Englishman, who claimed not only to be a professional fighter, but also the nephew of Oscar Wilde. Posters were hung throughout the city to publicize the event. In the controversial match, which took place at the Plaza de Toros Monumental on Sunday afternoon, April 23, we can safely surmise that Cravan fought true to form, that is, leading more with his mouth than with his fists. After six rounds of what must have amounted to little more than a skillful demonstration of shadow boxing -  staged more for the benefit of a rolling camera than the disappointed audience - Johnson finally dropped Cravan with an upper-right/left-cross combination. Knockout or not, the audience smelled farce, and because of the guaranteed fifty-thousand-peseta purse, the next day the daily press proclaimed the fight 'The Great Swindle.'

"For Johnson, it was just one more relatively uneventful 'ring contest,' as he called it, arranged for the benefit of his pocketbook. For Cravan, it was the main event in his tragically short life; two and one-half years later, at the age of thirty-one, he would disappear off the coast of Mexico, leaving behind only scant traces of a fascinating and adventurous life, one that stretched from the outback of Australia to the inner circle of vanguard artists and poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Far more significant than the footnote he left in pugilistic histories was the undying legacy of his outrageous behavior, which played a unique role within the development of an artistic and literary avant-garde. Arthur Cravan was, as Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia [Francis Picabia's wife] later asserted, 'a man who personified within himself, and without premeditation, all the elements of surprise to be wished for by a demonstration that was not yet called 'Dada.'
   
"Another release announced that Cravan temporarily abandoned his post as Professor of Real Club Marítimo boxing in preparation for the big fight. He trained publicly at the Bricall Gymnasium with boxers Hoche, Pomés and Jacks. To the press, he is a 'great athlete of the white race.' In order to continue to warm the spirits, it was announced that a great night of boxing with five bouts will be held April 12: Arthur Craven and Jack Johnson will be the arbiters of the last two fights" (Naumann, Francis. New York Dada 1915-23, p.162).

Jack Johnson, 1915.

Reality check: Though he claimed to be a light-heavyweight champion (of something, somewhere) Cravan, according to Boxrec, had absolutely no competitive experience prior to the fight. Indeed, his official record notes  that he fought only three bouts: With Johnson (knocked out); against Frank Hoche (a draw, June 26, 1916); and against Jim Smith ("The Black Diamond" with only this fight to his credit) in Mexico City, September 15, 1918 (knocked out). With a record of no wins, two losses via knock-out, and a draw his only threat as a boxer was to his own safety.

In January 1917, Cravan departed for New York. His shipmate was Leon Trotsky. Upon arrival in the city he was welcomed by Duchamps (who had preceded him), and the collector, critic, and poet Walter Arensberg.

Hollywood has yet to produce a biopic about the fascinating character who was Arthur Cravan; I smell  a ripe indie flick. Johnny Depp on steroids?

The poster for the pre-fight Great Evening of Boxing with Johnson and Cravan as referees (above) with its appeal to collectors of boxing material, Black-Americana, surrealist art and literature alike, is exceptionally scarce and highly desirable. The event it documents is one of the most famous and electrifying episodes in Dada history. Surrealism didn't get much more surreal than these two giant, flamboyant characters - one a phenomenal athlete and the proudest black man on Earth, the other a human artwork in constant progress - going at each other,  two of the most outrageous and out-sized personalities of their time in slam-bang-boing surreal battle-royal theater of the absurd that rocks, Do Wah Dada-Dada Dum Dada-Do.

A fine copy of the poster has just come into the marketplace after a long dry spell. The odds of seeing another copy in similar condition are not much better than Cravan's against Johnson, which is to say, fat chance.



Above, the only known footage of Arthur Cravan "boxing," in Spain 1916, here playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie with an anonymous Mighty Mouse, to all appearances the only living creature Cravan had a chance against. This is, quite possibly (why else would it have been filmed?), Cravan "training" for the fight with Johnson, a demonstration of surreal Dada absurdity exceeded only by the fight itself.
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[JOHNSON, Jack. CRAVAN, Arthur]. Poster advertising boxing matches at Iris-Park, Barcelona, on 12 April 1916, promoting the forthcoming match between Arthur Cravan and Jack Johnson. Barcelona: (Societat Editorial Manresana), 1916.

Printed in red and black on wove stock. 3 halftone photographic illus., including a central half-length portrait of Jack Johnson. 431 x 209 mm. (c. 17 x 1/4 inches).

Provenance: Eduardo Arroyo, the Spanish artist, born 1937, whose 1991 portrait drawings of Cravan after the Jack Johnson match were published in the Strasbourg Arthur Cravan catalogue.
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Poster image courtesy of Ars Libri Ltd, currently offering this prize, with our thanks. Image of Maintenant courtesy of University of Iowa Digital Library. Lespoir portrait of Cravan courtesy Wikicommons.
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The Dark Side of Currier & Ives

by Stephen J. Gertz

When we think of Currier and Ives we think of scenes like the above, The Road - Winter by Otto Knirsch, published by C&I in 1853, and now ubiquitously found on Christmas and greeting cards, postage stamps, and calendars. It is one of many enduring images published by Nathaniel Currier and James Merrit Ives that have become deeply embedded in the American psyche, each a slice of warm toast that make all Americans feel good, sentimental, and nostalgic for bygone days. They are all easily digestible.

Outside of collectors and curators, however, few are aware that between 1879 - 1890 Currier & Ives issued a series of color lithographs embracing all the worst stereotypes about Black Americans. Its Darktown series was, in fact, one of Currier & Ives' best-sellers, one print alone selling an astounding 73,000 copies.

 The prints in the Darktown Series feature the full array of negative stereotypes about American Blacks in the post-Civil War period and underscore the American tradition of reducing Blacks to buffoonish cartoon characters. As such, this rare compilation bears painful, vivid testimony of the racial attitudes of white, middle class Americans during this time. That the series was one of Currier & Ives'  - "Printmakers to the People" - most popular speaks reams.

While most of the seventy-five prints in the series - Black Americans at the racetrack, playing football, baseball, as firemen, etc., are unsigned, enough are (and stylistically similar to unsigned) to reasonably conclude that Thomas Worth and John Cameron were the artists responsible for the designs to all plates here collected.

"Thomas Worth (1834-1917), a New York artist, took his first drawing at the age of twenty to Nathaniel Currier and was compensated five dollars...This was the beginning of a long line of work which T. Worth did for the firm... He is mostly credited for his Darktown Series which was one of the firm's most prolific and profitable series. It is known that one print of the Darktown Series sold 73,000 copies" (Kipp, p. 27).

"John Cameron (1829-1862), although he died at the early age of 33, contributed many great prints to the Currier & Ives firm. Scottish by birth, he emigrated to this country and while still a young adult he was quickly recognized for his artistic talents" (Ibid, p. 32).

Currier and Ives did not publish their lithographs in albums. The prints were sold singly, through wholesalers and retailers, including pushcart vendors and door-to-door salesmen, that covered the entire nation down to each home; James Merrit Ives was a management and marketing genius. I recently had this collection pass through my hands; not a collection, really, but a salesman's sample book comprised of forty-one color lithographs from the Darktown series as well as other, similarly racist, Currier & Ives prints.

"Currier and Ives provided for the American public a pictorial history of their country's growth from an agricultural society to an industrialized on. Included in this chronicle of growth were pictures of the nation's black population. Many lithographs by Currier & Ives cast a romantic shadow over thier subjects, from kittens to mischievous children to firemen. That same rosy hue appears in some of thier prints illustrating African Americans, where antebellum plantation life is presented with warm nostalgia, carefully absolved of any unpleasantness. Other, more unusual prints, used the popular medium of lithography to confront issues like abolition. Whether implicit or explicit, lithographs from Currier & Ives now-famous firm offer strong statements on the role of race in nineteenth century American society...

"Creating a segregated community of black Americans, Darktown prints showcased a full array of negative stereotypes of former slaves who moved north after the Civil War. Portrayed as mentally slow, physically grotesque, and morally inept, African Americans became comical figures to the primarily white consumers of Currier and Ives prints. True to the period's nativist overtones, the Darktown series was accompanied by similar prints lampooning Irish and Italian immigrants, as well as Roman Catholics. Popular prints were made to satisfy popular demand; as such, this series bears a painfully vivid testament to the racial attitudes of white, middle-class Americans of the late nineteenth century" (Images of Blacks by Currier and Ives).

Between 1852, when James Merrit Ives joined Nathanial Currier's print business, and 1907, when the firm finally shut its doors, Currier and Ives published over 7,000 separate images yet while the Darktown series and associated racist prints made up only a small percentage of the total, at the time, as best-sellers, they represented a key source of profits. White Americans couldn't get enough of 'em.

Yep, them happy darkies really knew how to have a good time puttin' on airs an' foolishly tryin' to emulate white folk's ways; it's pure comedy, a laugh-a-minute minstrel show presented in color on paper. How could anyone guess that beneath the gloss of high-steppin' uninhibited, de-light, inchoate rage, hopelessness, and grief stirred an abyss of centuries-old degradation?

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CURRIER and IVES. [DarkTown Series Salesman's Sample Book]. Forty-One Color Lithographs Depicting Black Americans in the Late 19th Century ]. New York: Currier & Ives, 1879-1890.

First issue prints with full margins, at least 1 1/2 inches. Oblong folio (13 1/4 x 17 1/4 in; 336 x 437 mm). Forty-one original color lithographed prints, some highlighted with hand-coloring and heightened with gum arabic, on heavy paper.

References: Conningham, Currier and Ives Prints: An Illustrated Checklist.  Kipp, Robert. Currier's Price Guide to Currier & Ives Prints.

The Plates (w/Conningham #, date, and artist where signed):

1.  A Kiss in the Dark. (3347).  1881.
2.  Wrecked by a Cow Catcher. (6792).  1885.
3.  As Kind as a Kitten.  (281) . 1879. Thomas Worth.
4.  Jay Eye Sore - De Great World Beater. (3187).  1885.
5.  A Trot, with Modern Improvements. (6162).  1881. Thomas Worth.
6.  A Crack Trotter - "Coming Around." (1283)  1880. Thomas Worth.
7.  Well - I'm Blowed! (6613).  1883.. Thomas Worth.
8.  An Ice Cream Racket - Freezing In. (3023).  1889.
9.  An Ice Cream Racket - Thawing Out. (3014).  1889.
10.  Lawn Tennis at Darktown. A Scientific Player. (3463)  1885.
11.  Lawn Tennis at Darktown. A Scientific Stroke. (3464).  1885.
12.  A Darktown Tournament, - The First Tilt. (1431).  1890. John Cameron.
13.  A Darktown Tournament, - Close Quarters. (1430). 1890. John Cameron.
14.  Grand Football Match - Darktown against Blackville. A Kick off. (2483).  1888.
15.  Grand Football Match - Darktown against Blackville. A Scrimmage. (2484).  1888.
16.  A Foul Tip. (2090).  1882. Thomas Worth.
17.  A Base Hit. (374). 1882. Thomas Worth.
18.  De Tug Ob War! (6246).  1883. Thomas Worth.
19.  Won By A Foot. (6758).  1883. "Kemble - del."
20.  Great Oyster Eating Match between the Dark Town Cormorant and the Blackville Buster.
       The Start - "Now den dont you's be too fresh   wait for de word. (2635).  1886.
21.  Great Oyster Eating Match between the Dark Town Cormorant and the Blackville Buster.
       The Finish - "Yous is a tie - De one dat gags fust. am a gone Coon." (2636).  1886.
22.  A Darktown Law Suit. (1407).  1886. John Cameron.
23.  A Darktown Law Suit - Part Second. (1408).  1887.
24.  A Literary Debate in the Darktown Club.  Settling the Question. (3659).  1884. Thomas Worth.
25.  A Literary Debate in the Darktown Club.  The Question Settled. (3558).  1885. Thomas Worth.
26.  A Darktown Trial - the Judge's Charge. (1432).  1887.
27.  A Darktown Trial - the Verdict. (1433).  1887.
28.  A Surprise Party. (5901).  1883. Thomas Worth.
29.  A Change of Base. (997).  1883. Thomas Worth.
30.  A Penitent Mule, - The Parson on Deck. (4793)  1890.
31.  The Darktown Tally Ho, - Tangled Up.  (1427).  1889. Thomas Worth.
32.  The Darktown Tally Ho, - Straightened Out. (1426).  1889. Thomas Worth.
33.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - All On Their Mettle. (1387).  1889.
34.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - Hook And Ladder Gymnastics. (1388).  1887
35.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - Under Full Steam. (1397).  1887.
36.  "Bustin The Pool." (756).  1889. Thomas Worth.
37.  "A Clean Sweep." (1129).  1889. Thomas Worth.
38.  Two To Go! (6272).  1882. Thomas Worth.
39.  Got 'Em Both! (2453).  1882. Thomas Worth.
40.  Hug Me Closer George! (2983).  1886
41.  When! Shall We Three Meet Again? (6634). No date (c. 1877-1894). 

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Lithograph images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

Image of Currier and Ives window sign courtesy of The Philadelphia Print Shop.
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Rare and Racist American Books For Children

by Stephen J. Gertz

Ten Little Niggers. New York: McLoughlin Brothers, n.d. (c. 1895).

There is a world that many Americans would like to return to. It was, theoretically, a simpler time, of simple, straightforward values, simple government, simple freedoms.

These are yearnings we can all share, as mythical as they may be. What we cannot share is all that went along with it, including a brutally ugly streak of overt racism; it is completely and utterly indivisible from those halcyon days of yesteryear.
 

Nine Niggers More. London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co., n.d. (c. 1896).

Yup, those were the good ol' days, when you could call a black person a nigger without castigation. You could use the word on radio without fear of losing your broadcast because some people are too sensitive and need to get with the program; it's the audience's fault, not the broadcaster's.

Yes, those were less sensitive times. If you had cement between your ears, no problem; everybody did. Nuance, who needs it?

MONTGOMERY, Frances Trego. Billy Whiskers in the South. Akron: Saalfield, 1917

Now, of course, you can't call a black man a nigger without being armed against reprisal. You'd think black people would be over it by now but no, they keep clinging to offenses hundreds of years old. It's time to take back America from those who won't allow us to say or do what we want without punishment.
 

BAILEY, Carolyn Sherwin. Lil' Hannibal. New York: Platt and Munk, 1936.

The word and all it represents is anathema to all thinking people.

Is there any time a white person can use the word?

Years ago, when I fought in the amateurs, my stablemates and I called each other every racist epithet in the book. Blacks were niggers, Mexicans were beaners, and I, the only one in the joint, was a kike. No one was offended. We were friends; the words were thrown around easily and, dare I say it, with affection and respect. The words were not meant to hurt and were never taken as such.
 

PHIPPS, Mary. Liza Jane and the Kinkies. New York: Sears, 1929.

Outside the gym, with strangers, another story; never in a million years. Context is everything, which is something that many don't get. Only a supremely stupid person would use the word and think it casual and inoffensive.

My mother was raised in a small town in Texas whose black population literally lived on the other side of the tracks. I was taught that the N-word - never uttered in her home when she was growing up - was never, ever, to be used; it was deeply offensive and demonstrated a profound lack of respect. There is great irony here: My maternal grandfather was a member of the local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan. And here is the greater irony: For many at the time (the 1920s-early 1930s), including my grandfather (who died before I was born), enlisting in the Klan was akin to joining the Rotary Club, a local booster organization. You joined not because you believed in the ugliness but, rather, accepted it as a go along to get along means to maintaining business relationships. Bigotry? You took the bad with the good. If you were a cracker it was a non-issue; what's wrong with hating blacks?
 

Pantomine and Minstrel Scenes.: A Picture Carnival for the Young.
London and New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1883.

It is this sort of passive racism that lies at the bottom of much of the contemporary American political scene. It is deniable yet not believable. Many otherwise good people remain blind to the racism that virtually every American possesses, to one degree or another.
 

Ten Little Colored Boys. New York: Howell Soskins, 1942.
Featuring die-cut heads.

When you are raised with books such as these to provide the only models of Black Americans that white American children will likely see, you will grow up a racist, no matter how "charming" the books may be. And the children of those children, though once removed, will be heirs to that tradition. And if your life is not going the way you believe it should you will find a reason. It is not Black Americans, American Muslims, Jews, Hispanics - name your ethnic or religious group - that are to blame. it is the white person staring you in the face as you wash your face and hands that is responsible for your woe.
 

BAKER, Josephine. La Tribu Arc-en-Ciel. Netherlands: Mulder and Zoon, 1957.

It is inconceivable that an American publisher would have issued Josephine Baker's La Tribu Arc-En-Ciel, featuring her "rainbow" of children of all races, in 1957, the year it was published in Europe. Now, no problem; we've come so far. Yet remain so firmly in place.

It may come as a surprise that these books are avidly collected, not by racists, but by Black Americans. Same story with anti-Semitic literature; collected by Jews.

Take back America to the good old days? No. Never again.

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All images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books.

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