Disturbingly Racist 1882 Clockwork Toy Catalog – And Django Unchained Slave Dolls

The first thing I did when I saw this posted was to be shocked at the types of clockwork toys being sold in 1882, a good 17 years after the end of the Civil War, and not in the South, but in the North.  The second was to confirm this was a valid source, which I confirmed with three other original sources including the Library of Congress.   I post this disclaimer because I strongly object to the toys herein and they serve a lesson on how far we have come, and how much farther we have to go.

In the recent movie Django Unchained, the depiction of the pre-war South is writ large, not as inaccurate as Quentin Terantino’s Inglorious Bastards where Hitler gets killed and the whole World War 2 history is rewritten, but enough to make an avid historian such as myself cringe many times nonetheless.  Still, the pulp fiction ultra-violence was not what offended me the most, but the merchandisers actually manufacturing and selling Django Slave Doll action figures.  REALLY?  Even Ebay, where you can auction yourself, pornography and all manner of things, had sense to know these were unacceptable and banned their sale.  Here is a picture:

Do we really want children playing with slave master and slave dolls?  What type of game would they play if their parents were crass enough to take them to that movie and then buy these toys?  Are there whip and servant quarters accessories?

So it was the same outrage I felt over this 1882 Clockwork Toy Catalog, shown below in its entirety.

Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851 as a serial, made into a novel format in 1852.  By just 1853, it has sold over 500,000 copies world wide.  As an author, I know even today, selling 500,000 books in a year would be amazing.  It basically had the popularity of Harry Potter, Twilight, or other mass selling books.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of minstrel shows; Stowe’s melodramatic story humanized the suffering of slavery for White audiences by portraying Tom as a Christlike figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master because Tom refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who escape from slavery.

Senator Charles Sumner credited Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the election of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln himself reportedly quipped that Stowe had triggered the American Civil War.  Frederick Douglass praised the novel as “a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery”

So it is that just 29 years later, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a best seller of nearly all time, that a New York toy company is making Uncle Tom Minstrel toys for kids.  The caption includes, “funny as it is, there is also something pathetic in it, too”.  This is in addition to many other degrading toys including a “Heathen Chinese.”  I had hoped to post this to show how we have changed.  However, the utter insensitivity of the Django Unchained people to sell slave owner and slave dolls show perhaps we are still a stupid and backward people.  God created us all in His image, equal, each with a body, each with a soul.

The Library of Congress Record
Author: Automatic toy works, New York. [from old catalog]
Subject: Toys
Publisher: New York, Lockwood & Crawford, stationers
Language: English
Call number: 5886719
Digitizing sponsor: The Library of Congress
Book contributor: The Library of Congress
Collection: library_of_congress; americana

Full catalog record: MARCXML

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