The darktown fire brigade-saved! – Vintage Wall Art
![The darktown fire brigade-saved!, [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1884. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/f4/f4eabe1af12c-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 The darktown fire brigade-saved!, an antique lithograph rich in period detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
The framed print arrives ready to hang; the unframed option suits custom framing. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
The darktown fire brigade-saved!
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The title, *The Darktown Fire Brigade: Saved!*, promises a rescue joke, but the real subject is the racist humor that made the Darktown series popular. Currier & Ives, the New York firm better known for sentimental landscapes and genre scenes, issued these 1880s lithographs, which mocked Black Americans through demeaning stereotypes of laziness, incompetence and buffoonery. Such images were sold to white middle-class buyers at a time when Reconstruction-era gains for Black Americans were being rolled back across the South and the North's interest in them was fading. Today the prints are studied as evidence of how caricature helped normalize racial discrimination.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1884. |
|---|---|
| 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 × 1,086 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174310 |
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