Exhibit Displays Array of Art Work Depicting Racist Caricatures and Advertisements

Deborah Bayliss | As of Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Race and the Design of American Life: African Americans in Twentieth-Century Commercial Art, exhibit is on display at the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center, located on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th St. and runs through January 4, 2014.
The Race and the Design of American Life: African Americans in Twentieth-Century Commercial Art, exhibit is on display at the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center, located on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th St. and runs through January 4, 2014. Deborah Bayliss

A collection of images that depict African Americans in a historically negative light, including children’s books are currently on display as part of an exhibit at the University of Chicago (U of C).

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Photo by: Deborah Bayliss

Some African Americans who visited Race and the Design of American Life: African Americans in Twentieth-Century Commercial Art exhibit took issue with a poster of President Barack Obama being displayed right next to a poster of local wrapper Chief Keef.

Titled Race and the Design of American Life: African Americans in Twentieth-Century Commercial Art, the exhibit is at the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center, located on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th St. and runs through January 4, 2014.

“In putting these images on display, I was sensitive to how African Americans would feel,” said Chris Dingwall, who put the exhibit together as part of his PhD project. I knew the intentions (of the racist ads and caricatures) were hateful.

Dingwall used items borrowed from various owners as a way to examine how graphic design and advertising shaped the relationship between the politics of race and mass consumption.

“There are (several ways) in which graphic design shaped the relationship between the politics of race and mass consumption,” Dingwall explained. “One way is that it allowed manufactures to capitalize on racism. White consumers incorporated racist items into their homes as a way to elevate their whiteness by denigrating blackness.”

Images of African Americans were used on a wide variety of consumer goods throughout the twentieth century, from Aunt Jemima's pancakes to the Air Jordan basketball shoe.

Dingwall said those images did more than sell things.

photo

Photo by: Deborah Bayliss

“I was sensitive to how African Americans would feel,” said Chris Dingwall, who put the exhibit together as part of his PhD project.

“They put questions of race and racism in the heart of the American dream,” Dingwall explains on the web version of the exhibit. “Drawing from collections of food packaging, advertisements, children's books, album covers, and other household goods, this exhibit traces the vexed history of African Americans in commercial art—as images and as makers of their own image—and their vital role in shaping the rise and establishment of our modern consumer society.”

Dingwall also articulated his views on how white Southerner, Joel Chandler Harris, (journalist and author), promoted his immensely popular animal tale books (commonly referred to as “The Uncle Remus tales”) as slave folklore. The books included characters like Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the infamous Tar Baby. Children, Dingwall explained, found in the Uncle Remus collection not only a world that was a model of white innocence and black subordination, but also one that sanitized the history of slavery into an idyllic pastoral and safe arena for white fun.—a nostalgic fantasy rendered by at least two generations of modern designers, from pioneering cartoonists E. Boyd Smith and E. W. Kemble to Walt Disney's animation studio.

“I do not like these negative images,” said Dingwall, a well -dressed Caucasian, who refused to be photographed with one the racist caricatures in the exhibit.

According to Dingwall, some African Americans who visited the exhibit took issue with a poster of President Barack Obama being displayed right next to a poster of local wrapper Chief Keef.

“My point was to show how contrasting men with Chicago ties are valued. One depicts hope and the other, a (destructive) attainment of wealth,” Dingwall said.

The exhibit also highlights the notion that by mid-century, African Americans had become more visible to corporate America as consumers who were at first catered to by solely black businesses and white cosmetic firms selling hair-straightening and skin-whitening ointments. African Americans eventually recognized themselves as a market force.

Dingwall explained that in his opinion, The Civil Rights Movement changed the minds of white Americans from thinking that African Americans were “bad” for business. He added that John Johnson, founder and publisher of Ebony Magazine worked hard to pave the way in changing advertisers’ minds to mainstream blacks in their ads.

The public is encouraged to attend exhibitions at the Special Collections Research Center.

Visitors wishing to consult materials that are not on display as part of an exhibit are encouraged to contact the Special Collections Research Center at (773) 702-8705, before their visit to determine the availability of the materials they wish to consult. More information about how to arrange a visit for individuals or groups (including school groups) is available at www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/using/visiting/.

To visit the web exhibit on line, go to www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/raceanddesign/.

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