A Darktown Wedding -- The Parting Salute

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 caricatures Black (African American) people after a wedding. It is a sequel companion print (also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection) showing a newly wedded couple descending a staircase as a smiling well-wishers celebrate. In this print, the groom has been hit on the head by a thrown boot, causing him and his bride to lose their footing and fall down the last steps of a short staircase of a wooden building. The bystanders (four on the porch, and three standing on the ground at right) watch the wedded couple's calamity with open-mouthed shock. . At left, the red-shirted youth (who threw the boot) is running away to hide beneath the porch. The bride -- dressed in a fancy white dress (with red bodice) adorned with a yelllow/red pattern and a floral wreath, and with her veil flying behind her -- is wide-eyed and open-mouthed as she tumbles. The groom-- smartly dressed in a black jacket, blue/gray striped pants, and spats --is all akimbo as he falls backward; his top hat is aloft and his rose boutonniere is already on the ground (lower center). The title is imprinted in the bottom margin.


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.