Racist trade card promoting Higgins' soap and depicting a caricature of an African American woman bathing her child in a wash tub. Shows the African American woman portrayed with exaggerated features 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; and a blue, short-sleeved dress. The mother kneels on the floor as she bathes her young son in a washtub. She smiles, rubbing a wash cloth on the boy with her right hand. The naked boy stands in the tub with his left leg raised. She says in the vernacular, “Whoa! Dar Sambo! What do yer mean, what makes yer jump and shout? I will wash yer clean with Higgins' soap, and then yer may jump out.” Behind the tub, in the left, a girl, attired in a black-striped, red nightgown, and a boy, attired in an orange nightgown, watch the scene. In the right, another boy in an orange nightgown looks on. A white towel with two red stripes and decorative fringe is draped over the side of the wash tub. In the right background, a white sheet hangs on a clothesline. 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., Title from item., Date deduced from history of the advertised business., Gift of David Doret.
Date
[ca. 1880]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Goldman Trade Card Collection - Higgins' [P.2017.95.85]
