Engraving & Prints
Most of the well-established caricatures of African Americans in popular culture have their origins in the days of American slavery. One of the early trends in stereotyping was the tendency to recreate history through romanticized imagery of Blacks in contented slave roles. These were most common in engravings, which were used for publishing prints in newspapers and books. Most useful in this goal was the image of the Tom; the aged, loyal, darkie who was content to toil in the cotton fields by day, and play banjo or tell stories to the younger slaves by night. Images of sleepy-eyed pickaninnies lounging on piles of cotton while dreaming of chickens and watermelons also contributed to the notion that the slave days had been an ideal time in American history. The suggestion was that Yankee interference had ruined the pure, paternal environment of the Southern plantation. Songs published after the Civil War also reinforce this point. Co-existing with these romantic images are ones that dehumanize Blacks by equating them with animals. These images were used to perpetuate such caricatures as the coon, the brute, and the pickaninniny as a way of justifying Jim Crow segregation.