Editing Currier and Ives (section)

===Racist lithographs===
{{Main|Darktown Comics}}
Currier and Ives, because they were targeting a middle-class American customer, inadvertently created a "pictorial record" of values in the United States in the 19th century, which included contemporary racism.<ref name="lebeauJACC2000&quot;">{{Cite web |last=Le Beau |first=Bryan |date=Spring 2000 |title=African Americans in Currier and Ives's America: The darktown series |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/200582642 |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date=2021-02-15 |website=[[Journal of American and Comparative Cultures]]|id={{ProQuest|200582642}} }}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Currier & Ives |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6086252 |title=Currier & Ives |date=1980 |publisher=Abbeville Press |others=Albert K. Baragwanath |isbn=0-89659-092-5 |location=New York |oclc=6086252}}</ref>{{Rp|13}} According to Albert Baragwanath, of the approximately 500 "comic prints" produced by Currier and Ives, "more than half of these were the so-called Darktown Comics whose humor lay in gross burlesque."<ref name=":5" />{{Rp|104}}

The Darktown Comics series was perennially among the bestselling of Currier and Ives' over 7000 lithographs, with at least one selling 73,000 copies via pushcarts and in shops and country stores.<ref name="gale1993">{{Cite book |last=Gale |first=Robert L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-U93AAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+best+-+selling+item+appears+to+have+been+%E2%80%9C+Darktown+Comics%22%22 |title=A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1850s in America |date=1993 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=978-0-313-28524-0 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=Michael D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tNbq3-vuIPkC |title=Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation |date=2003 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-2760-4 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Peters |first=Harry T. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xtWizQEACAAJ |title=Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the American People |date=1948 |publisher=Doubleday |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=William Fletcher Thompson |first=Jr. |date=1962 |title=Pictorial Propaganda and the Civil War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4633807 |journal=The Wisconsin Magazine of History |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=21–31 |issn=0043-6534 |jstor=4633807}}</ref> According to J. Michael Martinez, every one of the series was a bestseller.<ref name="martinez2016">{{Cite book |last=Martinez |first=J. Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LG-oCwAAQBAJ&q=%22darktown+comics%22+best+sellers&pg=PA197 |title=A Long Dark Night: Race in America from Jim Crow to World War II |date=2016-04-14 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4422-5996-6 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|197}}

Thomas Worth recreated a previous [[Statue of Liberty]] image, using an [[African American]] woman similar to the [[Mammy stereotype|mammy]] figure holding a torch as part of their [[Darktown Comics]] series.{{Cn|date=August 2022}}