This Clymer for Pennsylvania governor poster attacks his opponent, Geary, and the Republican exponents of black suffrage, with a familiar caricature of blackness (Jim Crow History):
Text:
Every RADICAL in Congress VOTED for NEGRO SUFFRAGE. Every RADICAL in the Pennsylvania Senate VOTED for NEGRO SUFFRAGE. STEVENS, FURNEY, & CAMERON are for NEGRO SUFFRAGE; they are all Candidate for the UNITED STATES SENATE. NO RADICAL NEWSPAPER OPPOSES NEGRO SUFFRAGE. GEARY said in a Speech at Harrisburg, 11th of August, 1866 — “THERE CAN BE NO POSSIBLE OBJECTION TO NEGRO SUFFRAGE.”
For more caricatures of black people in U.S. history, see these posts: one, twp, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen.
And for examples of modern reproductions of these stereotypes (literally), see these: one, two, three, four, and five.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 8
Kat — January 16, 2010
As usual lately, not a single of the "we've done this before here" links work. Why is that?
Rolton — January 16, 2010
Looks like the links are missing the /socimages portion of the URL.
Rolton — January 16, 2010
Oh, I see. href="../2007/09/18/bugs-bunny-in-blackface/" is not how it should be - it breaks both from the main feed and from within the post.
But that means that, as a temporary fix for us readers, the links will work from here: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/
Miriam — January 16, 2010
I used the following image in my Grade 11 US History class last week: http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=6581 I asked the students what they saw in the picture, and then what the text told them about the event. Then I asked if the image was for or against the radical republicans. In both sections the students first read "Are you ready for this" as positive, but then realized that the images and text were very negative. We compared how the African-Americans in this image differed from the men showed here: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/treasures_of_congress/Images/page_13/47a.html Then we discussed how the media sensationalizes ideas even today.
Lisa Wade, PhD — January 16, 2010
Hello all,
Sorry about the links. They should work for everyone now.
-- Lisa, Soc Images