Boys and Girls and “Boys”: Popular Depictions of African‐American Children and Childlike Adults in the United States, 1850–1930

In 1853, Samuel Cartwright, a medical doctor and vocal antebellum apologist for slavery, expounded a common nineteenth-century notion that AfricanAmerican adults-especially men-could be equated with children: [T]he negro [has] a nature not unlike that of a newborn infant of the white race. In children, the nervous system predominates, and the temperament is lymphatic [...]. Negroes, moreover, resemble children in the activity of the liver and in their strong assimilating powers, and in the predominance of the other systems over the sanguineous [... ]. Like children, they require government in every thing; food, clothing, exercise, sleep-all require to be prescribed by rule or they will run into excesses. ("Diseases," 316-28) Here we explore how this idea was visualized through the complementary representations of AfricanAmerican children and their elders who are often depicted behaving childishly in popular American imagery of the period.1 Even though these caricatured complements-children and childish men-are often shocking to twenty-first century viewers, they were offered and received as entertainment at the time they were produced. We shall find that, as lighthearted as it purports to be, this postbellum popular imagery echoes, to a remarkable degree, much of antebellum racialist discourse such as that voiced by Cartwright above. It is clear that attitudes most vociferously expressed in slavery debates just prior to the Civil War were given form, and even enhanced in later decades. Such images reflected, propagated, and justified paternalistic attitudes (and worse) on the part of their primarily EuroAmerican audiences. Because few of us would laugh at the caricatures today, these depictions challenge us to understand how they once provoked mirth and confront the sometimes subtle ways they worked to promote a racist American society of which we are the heirs.2 The artists who created the imagery under consideration here worked predominantly in urban centers throughout the country (although the center of the trade was New York) and their work circulated widely, finding its way into a broad spectrum of American homes; the artists, like the majority of viewers were of primarily northern European ancestry, however. The humor in these "entertaining" images assuaged some uncomfortable realities about race relations in the United States at that period and helped EuroAmerican consumers imagine African Americans who would obligingly join in the fun made at their own expense. In fact, some African-American entertainers such as Bert Williams, George Walker, and others were rewarded handsomely for enacting stereotypical characters such as Jim Crow and Zip Coon in enormously popular stage performances. The pervasive imagery of song sheets, postcards, trade cards, and other print media argued that such performances reflected some imagined reality. Although the creation, signification, and legacy of many nineteenthcentury stereotypical black characters (such as Jim Crow, Zip Coon, Sambo, Mammy, and others) have been explored, popular representations of AfricanAmerican children have been generally overlooked. Here we shall see that African-American children in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular lithography were frequently cast in adult roles, serving, metaphorically, as their elders. Further, these representations frequently addressed EuroAmerican concerns about authority and the American social order. Thus, images of cute and playful imaginary children addressed and impacted an adult world that, in its very reality, was often harsh, ugly, and supremely unjust. It is significant that the pictorial analogies of children and childish adults targeted most particularly the African-American man who, although commonly addressed at the time as "boy," was perceived, particularly after the Civil War, as the most threatening segment of African-American society.3 Visual representations of mischief-making African-American youths advocated EuroAmerican control over African Americans in general and, by extension, especially those adult males who were consistently portrayed as "childish. …