The Darktown Tally Ho--Straightened Out

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 a stagecoach with caricatured Black (African American) passengers. The stagecoach is being pulled by a team of four donkeys galloping at a reckless speed along a rural dirt road. Amid clouds of dust, they head towards the right of the image. While the coach driver (to right of center; he wears striped red/white pants) crouches and stretches to pull the reins, seven passengers are tossed about as the stagecoach careens onto its right wheels (the left wheels being off the ground). Standing at the front of the coach with his feet on top of the coach driver's head, a terrified man stares ahead, while his rump rests against the back of a howling woman who clings to the body of another woman stretched across the top of the stagecoach. The woman lying precariously across the top of the stagecoach has her arms around the neck of an opened-mouthed man emerging from the coach cabin. Dangling helplessly from the rear of the stagecoach is a woman who holds onto the edge of the coach roof with her white gloved hands. Nicely dressed in a red jacket, her blue skirt billows above her boots revealing her red/white stockings. At left, one man has been thrown off the carriage; still airborne, he falls backward, seat first, into the mouth of a trumpet. At the lower left, a hat trails behind the coach. The background is comprised of a grassy field with trees in the distance. The image has rounded corners.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. The artist of this print is Thomas Worth, a prolific nineteenth-century illustrator who excelled at drawing horses and other subjects, many of which were made into lithographs published by Currier & Ives; he also drew many of the Darktown images.