Crossed by "A Milk Train"

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.

While Currier & Ives produced many images of trains, this print depicts a small train (at right) -- that is, a small locomotive engine with a misshapen smokestack, followed by an open car loaded with wood (fuel for the engine), and one passanger car. The Black (African American) engineer, keeping his left hand on the brake, stands up in exasperation--shaking his right arm holding a log --and shouts at a cow straddling the tracks ahead. Beside him, a Black youth (the stoker) in a red shirt also stands, shouts, and shakes his left upraised arm at the cow. Behind them (far right), the heads of four Black passengers lean out the window. At left, a ready-to-be-milked brown, horned cow (with distended udders) calmly stands rooted on the tracks and gazes at the green pasture beyond.


Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel included his younger brother Charles in the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907.