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Monday. Monday is de wash day, an I neber sulk or mope, becase de close am nice and clean, by using Higgins' soap [graphic].
Persistent link:
https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A68282
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Details
Contributor
Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company, printer.
Title
Monday. Monday is de wash day, an I neber sulk or mope, becase de close am nice and clean, by using Higgins' soap [graphic].
Publisher
Boston : Forbes Co
Publisher
MASS. Boston. 1880
Date
[ca. 1880]
Physical Description
1 print : chromolithograph ; sheet 12 x 8 cm (4.5 x 3 in.)
Description
Racist trade card promoting Higgins' soap and depicting a caricature of an African American woman domestic carrying a bar of soap and a wash tub. The woman is portrayed with exaggerated features and speaks in the vernacular. Shows the African American woman with her hair in pigtail braids tied at the ends in white bows, attired in an orange and yellow striped head kerchief, a red and white shawl, a blue dress with black stripes, a white apron with red stripes, orange and white striped stockings, and black shoes. She carries a large, wooden wash tub in her right hand and a yellow bar of soap labeled “Higgin” in her left hand. The woman smiles and walks toward the viewer and says, “Monday is de wash day, an I neber sulk or mope, becase de close am nice and clean, by using Higgins' soap.” In the right, a white shirt hangs on a clothes line pinned with wooden clothespins. The Charles S. Higgins Company, established by Higgins’s father W. B. Higgins in Brooklyn in 1846, manufactured "German Laundry soap" beginning around 1860, when Charles assumed the business. The laundry soap was packaged in a wrapper illustrated with an African American woman washing in a tub. By the early 1890s, Charles S. Higgins left the firm still operated under his name and formed Higgins Soap Company. Court proceedings over trademarks and tradenames ensued and Higgins Soap Company became insolvent by the mid 1890s.
Notes
Title from item.
Date deduced from history of the advertised business.
Gift of David Doret.
Subject
Charles S. Higgins Company.
African American household employees.
African American women -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Chemical industry -- New York (State) -- New York.
Laundry.
Racism in popular culture.
Soaps.
Wash tubs.
Genre
Chromolithographs -- 1870-1880.
Trade cards -- 1870-1880.
Printer
Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company, printer.
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| Goldman Trade Card Collection - Higgins' [P.2017.95.82]
Accession number
P.2017.95.82
In Collections
Gwen Goldman African Americana Trade Card Collection
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