The darktown fire brigade-a prize squirt: Now den'shake her up once moah fur de mug."" – Historic Reproduction
![The darktown fire brigade-a prize squirt: Now den'shake her up once moah fur de mug."", [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1885. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/75/753504b45a04-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-a prize squirt: Now den'shake her up once moah fur de mug."" in remarkable detail. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
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The darktown fire brigade-a prize squirt: Now den'shake her up once moah fur de mug.""
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Among the Darktown comics, this 1885 Currier & Ives lithograph turns a fire brigade into a joke. Its title promises a "prize squirt," and its caption, written in exaggerated dialect, mocks the speakers rather than any real firefighting. Currier & Ives issued the Darktown series in the 1880s, and such images circulated widely, reinforcing demeaning stereotypes of Black Americans at a time when Jim Crow segregation was hardening across the South. Historians now study the series as evidence of how popular printmaking spread racial ridicule, and researchers value the image for that reason.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1885. |
|---|---|
| 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 × 1,111 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174307 |
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