A darktown donation party, a doubtful acquisition: Dere parson you kin see de Debble hisself in dat mirror! – Vintage Print
![A darktown donation party, a doubtful acquisition: Dere parson you kin see de Debble hisself in dat mirror!, [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1893. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/78/78a21bee3a91-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
Step back in time with A darktown donation party, a doubtful acquisition: Dere parson you kin see de Debble hisself in dat mirror!, an antique lithograph rich in period detail. The original is held by the Library of Congress, so what you hang is a true record of its time.
Order it framed and ready to hang, or unframed to match a frame you already love. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Since 2001, Snapshots of the Past has shipped historic prints to tens of thousands of customers around the world.
A darktown donation party, a doubtful acquisition: Dere parson you kin see de Debble hisself in dat mirror!
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This lithograph's title places a church donation party in "Darktown" and turns on a parson who sees the devil in a mirror, a joke that gives the print its punchline. Currier & Ives published it in New York in 1893 as part of its Darktown comic series, which drew on minstrel-show stereotypes of Black Americans for laughs. Such prints sold widely in the 1880s and 1890s, when racist humor was common in popular print and Jim Crow laws were spreading across the South. Historians now study them as evidence of how caricature reinforced racial hierarchy. The dialect in the title is part of that mockery, not a faithful record of how people spoke.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1893. |
|---|---|
| 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 × 1,101 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174303 |
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