African American History Month: Higgins Soap, c1880s
To close out African American History Month, we present the following trade card (i.e., advertising cards) series, given away in the 1880′s by Higgins Soap. While it does have stereotyped dialect (and one use of “Sambo”), it otherwise (in my opinion) avoids a racist presentation. It’s especially refreshing, in comparison to other cartooned soap advertisements […]
African American History Month: Light & Shade, 1892
WARNING: The below 19th century strip contains racist imagery and language. The 1892 giveaway booklet Light and Shade, advertising Dreydoppel Soap, and containing the below 8-panel story, is (in my opinion) the most heinous piece of comic strip advertising I’ve ever seen. I debated myself over whether I could stomach scanning and posting this horrible, […]
African American History Month: Southern Lynchings & Queen Cotton
WARNING: One of the below cartoons includes racist imagery. We continue our African American History Month coverage, with a few images from Cartoons Magazine (above) and The Daily Worker (below). Above, “This Judge’s Recall Favored” by John Campbell Cory, from the September 1912 edition of Cartoons Magazine. Beneath, “This is our State Right” by Fred […]
African American History Month: Geo W. Helme Company, 1888
WARNING: The below 19th century strip contains racist imagery and language. Continuing our coverage of African American History Month, we have today another comic booklet by the Geo. W. Helme Co., manufacturer of Railroad Mills Snuff & Tobacco. Published in 1888, only two decades after the end of slavery, this is an example of how […]
African American History Month: Nebuchadnezzar Whoa, Sah! c1870s
WARNING: The below 19th century strip contains racist imagery and language. Continuing our African American History Month coverage, we present the circa 1870s fold-out comic strip Nebuchadnezzar Whoa, Sah!, published for Crescent Tobacco, by C.A. Jackson & Co. This giveaway comic, is one of many published in the 19th Century. While all types of products […]
African American History Month: Miscegenation or the Millennium of Abolitionism, 1864
WARNING: The below 19th century cartoon includes racist slurs. We open this year’s coverage of African American History Month, with the above cartoon broadsheet, published by G.W. Bromley & Co., on July 1st, 1864. It is part of a series of anti-Lincoln / anti-Abolition cartoons, published by Bromley, on how the abolition of slavery, would […]
African American History: Cartoonist Fred Ellis
We conclude our coverage of African American History Month, with a collection of works by Fred Ellis, longtime cartoonist for The Daily Worker, in which all of the cartoons shown here first appeared. The above July 13th, 1927 cartoon, depicting a gun-toting plantation owner on horse back, saying Wal’, I Still Got You, from the […]
“Colonial Slavery”, 1830: African American History Month & Pre-YK Talkies
WARNING: The below comic strip contains racist imagery and slurs. Above, Colonial Slavery, by artist William Heath, from issue #8, August, 1830, of the British cartoon monthly, The Looking Glass. This comic strip parodies the hypocrisy of logic used by the British government, to exonerate the actions of British slave owners in their colony of […]
Dreams Come True (Part 2)
Closing out this year’s African American History Month postings, we have more extracts from the late 1940s/early 1950s advertising booklet Dreams Come True! (click here to see Part 1). It was published by the Black and White Company (which made beauty products company for African Americans), and illustrated by African American artist George Lee. The […]
The New House That Jack Built, 1865
African American History Month continues, with the 1865 Civil War Anti-Slavery booklet The New House that Jack Built, with verse by L. Whitehead, and cartoon illustrations by Henry Louis Stephens. I was planning to scan my copy, but then I found that the complete book is already online. So, I merely scanned my cover plus […]
