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257 Columbia Avenue, Holland, MI 49423-3692
This talk explores the historical and cultural significance of physical portrayals of black people in late-nineteenth-century popular culture. Focusing on a specific set of popular lithographs from the 1880s and 1890s, Currier & Ives' "Darktown Comics," I argue that northern whites lampooned black people in order to discredit the urban migration of southern blacks. Through grotesque representations of blacks’ physical attributes and behavior, Yankees justified both their retreat from Reconstruction and their tacit acceptance of oppression and outright violence against southern blacks.
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