Darktown sociables, a fancy dress" surprise" – Historic Print
![Darktown sociables, a fancy dress" surprise", [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1890. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/dc/dc9332f8cb1d-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
A window into the past: Darktown sociables, a fancy dress" surprise", preserved in this antique lithograph. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
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Darktown sociables, a fancy dress" surprise"
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Darktown Sociables, A Fancy Dress Surprise" belongs to the Darktown comics, a series Currier & Ives issued in the 1880s and 1890s that portrayed Black Americans as buffoons in scenes of social life. The title suggests a costume party, but the joke rests on racist stereotypes of Black people as foolish and out of place in middle-class settings. This hand-colored lithograph was published in New York in 1890, when such caricatures sold widely and helped reinforce racial hierarchies after Reconstruction. Today it is most useful as a document of that prejudice, and it shows how popular print could shape white audiences' ideas about Black Americans.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1890. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : lithograph, hand col. |
| 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 × 1,096 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174404 |
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