At an auction recently, I came across a deck of Old Maid cards, 45 in a box. This was the second time in the last six months or so that I’d found a deck of the cards, but this time, I uncovered a pair of black figures.
Unfortunately, they were in stereotypical poses, which shouldn’t have been surprising. The cards were made by Whitman Publishing Co., and although neither deck had a date on it, they appeared to be from the 1940s or 1950s.
The first deck I found was all white characters with caricatured names and poses, but not caricatures themselves. The two black figures in the most recent deck were named Agonizing Sue, a woman in a pink dress with pink lips. The worst was Jazzbo Jackson, a man in a green suit, red-rose corsage and some missing teeth. Very demeaning.
Seeing these cards got me to wondering about what other derogatory figures were in the Old Maid decks. What images did game-makers like Whitman, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley and Russell use to show black people as ignorant and that people now sell as “Black Americana” collectibles? (Did you know that Old Maid was derived from a drinking game where the loser bought the next round of drinks. I didn’t.)
The term “Black Americana” feels like a misnomer to me. It seems to make what’s ugly sound palatable, as if it’s okay to sell this stuff on Ebay and other sites because, you know, it’s part of American history, no matter what it represents. I have no problem with selling the positive images as collectibles, but I cringe at most of what I see online and at auction.
I searched Ebay and other “collectibles for sale” sites for Old Maid Black Americana cards. Here’s what I found:
Old Maid Improved Couples Round The World. One pair of cards showed a man and woman in Victorian clothing dancing the Virginia Reel (a folk dance that I had never heard of, and know now that it’s the dance I’ve seen in movies about the colonial period). He had big lips, she was overweight and another man sat on the floor playing the banjo.
Old Maid Jolly Game. Someone from Singapore was selling this Parker Brothers game on Ebay. The description mentioned that there was a black couple among the cards. There were no photos to see, so I’m not sure if they were the same as the Improved Couples cards.
Old Maid with Little Black Sambo cards. Two companies – E.E. Fairchild Corp. and All-Fair, both out of New York state – manufactured decks with this figure. The All-Fair card was circa 1932. Interestingly, the drawings were complimentary.
Old Maid with a black boy and black girl (circa 1940). The girl, Honey Pie, had pigtails. The boy, Seedy Sambo, was eating a watermelon. Take away the watermelon and they would’ve been cute. From Whitman.
Old Maid with Melon Moe (another little boy with a watermelon!) and Lily White, a little girl playing with a doll. From Russell Mfg. Co.
Old Maid with Mose Snow, Mandy Lou and Smoky Sue. The Ebay description indicated they were Black Americana. The photo was blurry so I couldn’t tell. From Milton Bradley.
My findings didn’t stop there. I also came across similar games in other countries. A few sites talked about a Dutch game called Zwarte Piet (or Black Peter), named after a Christmas character. In the Netherlands and some other countries, Zwarte Piet was St. Nicholas’ (or Sinterklaas) helper, who – depending on what you read – either passed out candy to children or was mean to them if they’d been bad.
My Google search turned up many people in the Netherlands donning blackfaceto celebrate the pair’s arrival in early December. Some accounts said Black Peter was a chimney sweep and the blackness was from soot, not a reference to Africans or Moors. Who knows? Blackface is still out of place in 2009. 
An Old-Maid-like game in Germany is called Schwarzer Peter or Black Peter. France’s version is Le Vieux Garcon (translated Old Boy, who is the Jack of Spades).
Black characters started showing up on game cards with the creation of a game by a Massachusetts woman named Anne W. Abbott for the company of W. and S.B. Ives. The card game was called Dr. Busby, manufactured in 1843, its black characters shown with dignity. By 1905, the caricatures were awful.
In an essay reprinted on the website of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan, Denis Mercier wrote that the early black figures in Dr. Busby were non-derogatory. He went on to say in his essay, “From Hostility to Reverence: 100 Years of African-American Imagery in Games,” that the popular Old Maid game offered a “veritable encyclopedia of derogatory stereotypes.” He also mentioned other games that were even worse.
My research turned up card games based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, produced by the Ives company in 1852. They weren’t the only one: Another game based on the book was called “Uncle Tom & Little Eva.”
This research was an eye-opener for me. I’ve seen stereotypical toys in books and at auctions, the mammy cookie jars and post cards, but I’d never thought about card games. We couldn’t catch a break, could we?
