Violence in Currier & Ives’ Darktown Prints

     The Darktown series, which consisted of over one hundred prints, were some of Currier & Ives’ best-selling pictures, with one image alone selling 73,000 copies. [1] After Currier & Ives’ closure and dissolution in 1907, the Darktown lithographic stones were some of the very few saved, and were sold to other lithographers who continue to produce prints from them. [2] Bryan Le Beau states that the Darktown series “clearly exploited, capitalized on, and reinforced the negative racial stereotypes of the Jim Crow South.” They depict blacks as bumbling, ignorant, and incompetent in their attempts at mimicking white culture and society.

     As demonstrated in the previous section, a unified white supremacist effort in the United States to establish white cultural hegemony was practiced in all regions, and it used tools such as songs, poems, stories, and lithographs such as the Darktown prints to disseminate racist messages. In his study on media rhetoric and images of lynching in the late-nineteenth and twentieth century, Ira M. Wasserman points out that “the major mass media were periodicals and national newspapers.” [3] Wasserman differentiates the regional approaches, noting that “in the West, vigilante groups were perceived in a romantic manner by the national media as defenders of the economic order and protectors of social anarchy” while in the South “the defenders of lynching used race to justify their criminal acts, portraying themselves as self-appointed defenders of white civilization against a group of inhuman animals who would attack and ravish all white women.” [4] He defines rhetoric as “the effective use of language to construct a selective representation of some aspect of social reality” and states that this is “usually supportive of the writer’s position and world view.” [5]

     Seeing as that there were very few black or other minority presses operating during these years, this “position” was overwhelmingly white—in its perspective, as well as in its attitudes and recounting of lynchings. The prints of Currier & Ives—not just the Darktown series, but the range of pictures in general—were another form of mass media. Through images, they perpetuated not only an idealized white American Utopia, but actively portrayed non-whites as “others” outside of the range of opportunity, progress, freedom, and civil entitlements. Several of the Darktown prints can be slotted under broad categories that reflect white attitudes toward African Americans during the Gilded Age. Three groupings will be discussed here related to African American mobility; white perceptions of black behavior and physical characteristics; and violence as it was both perceived by whites on the part of blacks, and as it was carried out by whites against blacks.

     The first category is the portrayal of blacks trying to move beyond their current place in society, or “attempting whiteness,” as it were. The Darktown Bicycle Club – On Parade (1895) [6] shows several African Americans dressed in fashionable clothes riding bicycles through “Darktown.” The bicycle here could be a representation of freedom—a symbol of mobility, both physical and economic. However, in a subsequent print called The Darktown Bicycle Race – A Sudden Halt (1895) [7] (Fig. 1) the party has crashed into a mound of lime which is being used by a pair of black house painters to white wash a building. One of the cyclists, half buried in the lime, had a glazed expression and appears almost dead. This could be read as a warning: those who attempt to escape Darktown will meet a grim fate. It seems not a little coincidental that the lime—here the facilitator of violence—is itself white.

     Another set of prints depicts an old man and a young boy standing near a wash basin. In the first print Cause and Effect – A Timely Warning (1887) [8] the man is warning the boy that he should “leff dat soap alone” because it will “wash all de butiful brack outen you.” In the subsequent print Cause and Effect – A Natural Result (1887) [9] (Fig. 2) the boy has somehow scrubbed away his skin color and now has white hands. The old man cries “Now you’s done gone spile a little nigger.” This seems to suggest that not only is the boy himself bodily unclean, but that in attempting to wash himself he will alter something inherent in his nature—a notion that could be viewed in a deeper context related to labor and slavery. A similar situation is seen in A Darktown Tournament, – Close Quarters (1890) [10], where a pair of black house painters are fighting over who will get the job of painting a house standing behind them. Hanging from one of the house’s windows is a banner that reads “A Wite Wassher Wanted” (it should be noted that the E’s of the phrase in the image are backward). The two men are fighting with brushes, literally painting one another white in the process.

     In yet another pair of images entitled Darktown Tourists – Going Off On Their Blubber (1886) [11] and Darktown Tourists – Coming Back On Their Dig (1886) [12] (Fig. 3), an African American couple about to take a voyage on a ship is being seen off by friends at a dock. The first picture depicts them poor and sad in their departing. In the second picture, however, the same couple seems to have improved their financial situation and is now portrayed in fancy clothing, the man holding a hand up to the same friends who have returned to the dock to welcome them back. The caption reads: “Don’t know common Niggahs.” These two images, particular the second, seem to personify the pejorative of “uppitiness” attributed by whites to blacks who attempted to rise above their social and economic standing.

     A final picture in this category perhaps best encapsulates white fears of black mobility and freedom during this period. Barsqualdi’s Statue of Liberty frightening de World: Bedbugs Harbor, NY (1884) [13] (Fig. 4) depicts a black woman as the Statue of Liberty. She stands on a wooden crate beside a rooster, holds a torch in one hand and has a large book tucked under one arm, and wears an American flag as an apron. She appears surprised and befuddled as to how she has gotten there. There are several aspects of this image—the conflation of notions of white liberty and black emancipation—that seem important here. Two of the most significant are the flag apron, which is being worn as a literal symbol of service (or perhaps, servitude—but certainly not citizenship), and the torch itself, which could be perceived as a wick of sorts—the lit fuse that will lead to an “explosion” of African Americans throughout the nation. Again, it seems not at all coincidental that this image was produced at a time when there was a massive increase in immigration (to the chagrin of many white Anglo Saxon protestants) to the United States via New York.

     The second category of images relates to the portrayal by Currier & Ives of blacks as bumbling, weak, stupid, and/or inferior. This lies at the heart of so many of the pictures, several of which are themed around sports, horses, and emergencies such as fires. Indeed, The Darktown Fire Brigade – Under Full Steam (1887) [14] is a good example of the latter, which portrays a confused rescue attempt of a family whose house is burning. Similar images, such as Infantry Maneuvers, By the Darktown Volunteers (1887) [15] (Fig. 5) in which blacks are arranged in militias wearing mismatched uniforms and helmets from armies of different nations, and the diptych A Political Debate in the Darktown Club: Settling the Question (1884) [16] and A Political Debate in the Darktown Club: The Question Settled (1884) [17] (Fig. 6) in which a pair of black men are arguing politics and ultimately come to blows, suggests that African Americans are disorganized, incompetent, and unable to settle conflicts in any other way than by violent means.

     Still another picture adds a dubious biological element to the denigration of black Americans. The print Scientific Shaving on the Darktown Plan (1890) [18] (Fig. 7) portrays several black men, each with distorted, simian-like features, suggesting the pseudoscience known as phrenology, which purported that mental qualities could be determined by the shape and size of one’s skull. Scientific racism was rampant and supported by leading practitioners in the field during the last decades of the nineteenth century. In Rebirth of a Nation, Jackson Lears notes how Nathaniel Shaler, “a professor of natural science at Harvard . . . asserted in the Atlantic Monthly that blacks and whites had evolved profoundly different race traits over eons of time: white people were endowed with organizational skills; black people were imitative.” [19] As Lears writes, “the pseudoscience of race provided legitimacy for white Southerners’ fear of the ‘new negro,’ who had never known the supposedly civilizing influence of slaver.” [20]

     Stereotypes of black predilections and proclivities are also pervasive in this category, best exemplified perhaps in pictures such as The Magic Cure (1890) [21] and Two Souls with but a Single Thought (1889) [22] (Fig. 8) in which African Americans are portrayed eating watermelon. Such stereotypes were denounced by prominent black figures at the time such as Ida B. Wells, who wrote a letter to the New York Age in regard to the blatant racism at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago where a “Colored Folks Day” was held on August 25, 1893. She denounced the fair, whose horticulture department had “pledged itself to put plenty of watermelons around on the grounds” in preparation for the day. [23] She stated that: “the self-respect of the race is sold for a mess of pottage and the spectacle of the class of our people which will come on that excursion roaming around the grounds munching watermelons, will do more to lower the race in the estimation of the world than anything else. The sight of the horde that would be attracted there by the dazzling prospect of plenty of free watermelons to eat, will give our enemies all the illustration they wish as an excuse for not treating the afro-American with the equality of other citizens.” [24] The fact that the pair of prints previously mentioned predated the fair suggests that the stereotype was well established previous to the exposition, and that Currier & Ives through these pictures were indeed capitalizing on pervasive racist sentiments.

     The third category, perhaps the most devious in both its implications and modus operandi, is centered on violence. Two prints in particular hint at a purported threat that African American men posed in keeping with the mythic “black beast” analogy. The first, On De Haf Shell! (1886) [25] (Fig. 9), portrays a black man holding a shucked oyster in his left hand, and a blade in his right. His brows are raised, his mouth is open, his eyes seem to shine with malevolence—it could be said that he is leering at the viewer. Oysters, considered aphrodisiacs since at least the Ancient Roman period, are symbols of sexual passion, and the blade—an oyster shucker held upright in an imposing manner—could be seen as the instrument used to force submission on a hapless victim. In sum, the picture speaks to white fears of the fabricated black-rapist-threatening-white-womanhood ideology that Ida B. Wells exposed as false in so many of her writings.

     Another image, The Darktown Othello (1886) [26] (Fig. 10), portrays a black man in ragged clothing performing for a white man and woman who are reclined on a chair watching him. There are two aspects significant here, the first being that Shakespeare’s Othello is in part about a Moorish man who murders his white wife Desdemona in a jealous rage. The symbolism of the black threat against a white woman is perhaps obviously inherent in the picture for anyone familiar with the play, however there is a deeper meaning in the Currier & Ives’ picture. The white woman is observing the black man while her head rests on the white man’s chest—the white man looking very much like Uncle Sam in different colored clothing. The woman appears to feel safe as she watches the show, because she is resting against a white man who could be said to symbolize not only male protection but the protection of her country.

     Several other prints reinforce not so subtle intimations of white supremacist violence against African Americans. De White Dog’s Got Him! (1889) [27] (Fig. 11) portrays a dog fight with two groups of black men watching. At the center of the picture on a dirt floor, a small white dog has pinned a black dog onto its back and is biting it in the throat. The contingency on the right—the owners of the black dog—look surprised, some even stare fearfully back at the viewer, while the group on the right—owners of the white dog—are cheering and celebrating. The shirts of two of the men from the “winning” faction are blue and white checked and horizontally red striped, and together appear at a quick glance similar to the American flag.

     In the 1890 print Darktown Sociables, “A Fancy Dress” Hoodoo [28] (Fig. 12) a troop of African American opera (vaudeville?) performers are fleeing from two figures dressed in white sheets, one of whom is wearing a skeleton mask, who have appeared in a doorway on the left of the picture. Though one of the approaching figures is black, the other taller figure with the mask towers over the former. This taller figure almost certainly represents Death, though what is interesting here is that Death is wearing white, not black, robes. Though the Ku Klux Klan had been essentially quashed in the 1870s by a unified northern and southern Republican effort to end terrorism against blacks in the South, the echo of dread and panic that the Klan had established in the region is evident in such pictures. [29] Currier & Ives seems to have been well aware of this, and were capitalizing on the fear.

     Finally, one image in particular conjures the dubious nature of court trials and lack of due process related to lynching. Trial by Jury – The Verdict (1887) [30] (Fig. 13) portrays a scene in a courtroom in the moments after a jury has pronounced its verdict. The jury, comprised solely of black men, has found the black defendant not guilty of stealing chickens. The exonerated man is thumbing his nose at the jury, who are standing and holding chickens by the throat behind their backs. The theme of lynching communicated here is palpable—from the freed defendant seemingly escaping persecution for his alleged crime to the jury secretly hiding the strangled chickens behind their backs (one of the jury is actually blindfolded). This picture in its layers of haunting symbolism reinforces lynching by making a mockery of the courtroom, the jury itself, and legal proceedings in general. The real verdict, the picture suggests, seems to be held in the hands behind the backs of the jurors—the chickens here serving as metaphors for the real “justice” of the extralegal brand that should have been carried out instead.

References

1. Le Beau, Currier and Ives: America Imagined, 231

2. Le Beau, 231; Bryan F. Le Beau, “African Americans in Currier & Ives’ America: The Darktown

Series,” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 23, Issue 1 (2004): 74, accessed January 28, 2022, https://doi-org.ezproxy.bgsu.edu/10.1111/j.1537-4726.2000.2301_71.x

3. Ira M. Wasserman, “Media Rhetoric and Images of Lynching in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Michigan Sociological Review 12 (1998): 77.

4. Wasserman, 86.

5. Wasserman, 70.

6. Currier & Ives. The darktown bicycle club - on parade: “Hooray for de rumatic! Dont she glide lubly.”, 1892. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91724142/.

7. Currier & Ives. The darktown bicycle race-a sudden halt: “I knowd we'd have busted de record if it hadn't bin for dis misforchin.”, 1895. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91724148/.

8. Currier & Ives. Cause and effect. A timely warning., 1887. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/90714346/.

9. Currier & Ives. Cause and effect. A natural result., 1887. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/90714344/.

10. Currier & Ives. A darktown tournament, - Close quarters., 1890. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91790038/.

11. Currier & Ives. Darktown Tourists: “Going off on their blubber.”, 1886. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91790034/.

12. Currier & Ives. Darktown Tourists: Coming Back on their Dig., 1886. [New York: Currier & Ives] http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.06658/

13. Currier & Ives. Barsqualdi's Statue Liberty frightening the world: Bedbugs Island, N.Y. harbor., 1884 [New York: Currier & Ives].

14. Currier & Ives. The darktown fire brigade-under full steam:” Now den squirt, for all she's wuff. , 1887. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91724475/.

15. Currier & Ives. Infantry Maneuvers, By the Darktown Volunteers, 1887. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.09165/

16. Currier & Ives. A Political Debate in the Darktown Club: Settling the Question., ca. 1884. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001700599/.

17. Currier & Ives. A Political Debate in the Darktown Club: The Question Settled., ca. 1884. [New York: Published by

18. Currier & Ives. Scientific Shaving on the Darktown Plan., ca. 1890. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.09791/.

19. Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation, 104.

20. Lears, 103.

21. Currier & Ives. The Magic Cure., ca. 1890. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002709986/.

22. Currier & Ives. “Two souls with but a single thought.”, ca. 1889. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002697433/.

23. Ida B. Wells, “To Tole with Watermelon,” in The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, ed. Henry Louis Gates, (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 124.

24. Wells, 124.

25. Currier & Ives. On De Haf Shell!. , ca. 1886. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001700371/.

26. Currier & Ives. The darktown othello: I mashed her on de dangers i had passed drivin' an Army Muell., 1886. [New York: Currier & Ives] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91724670/.

27. Currier & Ives. De White Dog's Got Him!. , ca. 1889. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002698813/.

28. Currier & Ives. Darktown Sociables, a “Fancy Dress” Hoodoo., ca. 1890. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/91724716/.

29. Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon, 2.

30. Currier & Ives. Trial by jury—the Verdict., ca. 1887. [New York: Currier & Ives.] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002697368/.