The Darktown Bowling Club: Watching for a Strike

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.

This print depicts caricatured figures. At right, seven Black (African American) men --three of them with their backs to the viewer--stand and lean over the railing of a bowling alley, near the upright pins. The are looking at a bowler as he is about to release a bowling ball at the far end of the alley (at upper left). Behind the bowler, six male spectators (all wearing hats; four of them are silhouetted in shades of brown) stand near a scoreboard. An expanse of a wooden floor takes up the lower left quadrant of the image. The title and caption are imprinted beneath the image.

Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888), 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 (1824–1895), the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law, was made a business partner. Subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued via their successors until 1907.