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Historical Documents William McLean, "Offended Dignity" 1830 |
Resource Bank Contents |
click image for close-upIn response to anti-slavery sentiment created by British female abolitionists, the October 1829 issue of the Westminster Review featured pro-abolition articles that detailed violence against female slaves in Jamaica and the Bahamas. Four months later, cartoonist William McLean published a broadside that satirized the articles as well as the abolitionists.
In McLean's rural, tropical setting, a black man and woman in "ball dress" converse while several black farmers look on. He holds a copy of the Westminster Review that depicts a white man raising a whip over a kneeling African female slave and, says "dem Buckra say darra you -- Miss Leah Tomkin." The woman, standing arms akimbo, retorts, "Dem Buckra tell big lie, Massa Richard Tanton -- an you an Buckra be one great fool."
The African female supplicant was popularized as an anti-slavery emblem in the late 1820s by the Ladies Negro's Friend Society, an abolitionist group in Birmingham, England.
Image Credit: Print Collection Mirium and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Print and Photographs The New York Public Library Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Related Entries:
• Specimen of Modern Printing Types, No. 844
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