The darktown fire brigade-under full steam: Now den squirt, for all she's wuff – Vintage Print
![The darktown fire brigade-under full steam: Now den squirt, for all she's wuff, [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1887. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/55/557d01da651d-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 fire brigade-under full steam: Now den squirt, for all she's wuff in remarkable detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
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The darktown fire brigade-under full steam: Now den squirt, for all she's wuff
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Its title and dialect caption set the joke: a fire brigade working its steam engine, with one man calling for the squirt to be pushed "for all she's wuff." Issued by Currier & Ives in New York in 1887, it belongs to the Darktown series, a run of comic lithographs that mocked Black city life through minstrel-era stereotypes. Such prints sold widely in the 1880s and helped spread demeaning ideas about African Americans, so today they are studied as much as evidence of that prejudice as for their humor.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1887. |
|---|---|
| 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 × 1,126 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174317 |
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