The darktown bowling club: Watching for a strike – Vintage Print
![The darktown bowling club: Watching for a strike, [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1888. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/47/475b4fc2f3cd-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
This rare antique lithograph captures The darktown bowling club: Watching for a strike in remarkable detail. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.
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The darktown bowling club: Watching for a strike
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Bowling was a popular pastime in American cities in the late 1800s, and this lithograph turns a club's game into a joke, as its title, *Watching for a strike*, suggests. Currier & Ives issued it in New York in 1888 as part of the Darktown series, a run of caricatures that portrayed African Americans as comic and foolish. The series drew on minstrel-show stereotypes that spread widely after Reconstruction. Today historians study it as evidence of how racist imagery shaped public attitudes, so it is best read as a document of prejudice rather than an accurate picture of its subjects.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1888. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : lithograph. |
| Genre | c1983 |
| Notes | Caricature issued as part of the Darktown comics" series. Currier & Ives : a catalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,066 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174302 |
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