Ethnic Notions

Book excerpt: "This collection contains a large number of functional items dating from 1847 to the present... The stereotyping, style, composition, and line of the items reflects society's responses to slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, World Wars I and II, and the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties as experiences in this country and as these events were perceived abroad. This collection focuses on caricatures of blacks which have been used to convey fear, support, or rejection of assigned roles. In America, caricature was used to maintain the right to exclude black people, and thus insure a total separation of the races. European caricatures supported America's need to legislate exclusion of Afro-Americans"--Foreword