The Darktown Elopement: "Hurry Mr. Jonsing, dars dat chile lopin wif de coachman."

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 Black (African American) figures. On a moonlit night, a man wearing a red nightshirt and carrying a shutgun runs with his dog from his shack door (at left) towards an eloping couple (at right) -- presumably to go after the young man who had persuaded his daughter to leave home. He is urged on by a woman (dressed in white nightgown and night cap) who leans out of one of the shack windows and holds a lit candle in her upraised right hand. At right, the couple are being tossed off their bucking donkey. On top of the roof, two black cats jump down the chimney. A rope ladder dangles from the open trap door in the roof. The full moon (upper right) is partly obscured by clouds. 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.