Black Dignity: Artistic Context

Although he was a white artist, Edmund Archer painted realistic portraits of Black Americans that starkly contrast with the caricatures and stereotypical imagery that were used in popular media in the early 1900s. 

This 1920s ‘Bull Durham’ tobacco advertisement uses two of those caricatures: the “Mammy” stereotype of a mature Black woman in a red head scarf and the “pickaninny” caricature of a Black child, often shoeless and sometimes holding watermelon. The ad’s artist dehumanized both the woman and girl with grossly exaggerated lips. 

Working at the same time, Edmund Archer’s painting “Woman in Red” is a highly realistic portrayal of a Black woman. Similarly, Archer’s work “Boy in a White Shirt” does not exaggerate the boy’s features. Both sitters appear dignified. 

This 1920s cookie tin, produced for the Southern Biscuit Company in Richmond, uses a third main stereotype of African American men, the “Uncle Tom.” In this image, an older, well-dressed Black man is smiling and serving cookies to a white family. Looking back to an earlier time, this illustration implies that life for this Black man was not hard during the era of enslavement.  

Conversely, Edmund Archer’s “Lunch Hour” shows an older Black man in workingman’s overalls taking a break from his labor to eat.  

These denigrating images of Black Americans remained pervasive in popular art forms, like book illustrations, tobacco advertisements, comic strips, and food packaging, throughout the 1900s. With this context, Archer’s honest representations of Black men, women and children continue to stand out today.