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"These images shaped the most gut-level feelings about race"

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"It is not just that it's in the figurines, (...) it is that we are seen that way, perceived that way, even in terms of public policy"

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“What were the consequences of these caricatures? How did they mold and mirror the reality of racial tensions in America for more than 100 years?”

“It has become a part of our psyche. It's a real indication that one of the best ways of maintaining a system of oppression has to do with the psychological control of people”

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“The Jim Crow was a dance that started on the plantations as a result of dancing being outlawed in 1690”

“According to legend, T.D. Rice saw a crippled black man dancing an exaggerated Jim Crow dance. Rice took the man's tattered clothes and that night imitated him on stage”

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“The minstrel show captivated broad audiences, mostly in the North and emerged as America's first form of national popular entertainment”

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“Minstrel caricatures mirrored the prevailing belief that slavery was good for the slave since it drew upon his ‘natural’ inferiority and willingness to serve. The proof was often in the image of the happy sambo”

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“The mammy emerged as a defense of slavery."

“She's presented almost as an antithesis of the white lady, the person who does not have the qualities of fragility and beauty which would make her valued in the society”

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“Millions of emancipated slaves were inspired by the promise of equality. But this promise was betrayed.“

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“Political debate manipulated public fears about the so-called ‘black menace.’ Old stereotypes were adapted to the new politics. Increasingly, blacks were identified as brutes”

"These images were guaranteed to incite racial violence. But more, they justified it"

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“'A man cannot commit so great an offense against his race, against his country, against his god, as to give his daughter in marriage to a negro, a beast'”

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“During Reconstruction, the black is a challenge to the political system and they have not only then tried to justify maybe a reason for going back to slavery, but they also are justifying their reasons for killing [them]”

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“America at the turn of the century experienced unprecedented race hatred. Violence, Jim Crow segregation, mob terror, became acceptable methods of social control”

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“There was a need to imagine black children as animal-like, as savage [...] Then it's much easier to justify the threat that's embodied in having an alligator pursuing the child”

“There was still a segment of the population that large that was very uncomfortable with the black presence in the new world and needed to get rid of them, artistically rendering away, of removing [them] so that there's nothing left“

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“As America crossed into the 20th century, these images were inherited by Vaudeville and motion pictures. The forms were new, but the content was unchanged”

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“The reality of black servicemen who now bore arms and demanded the freedom and opportunity at home they had fought for abroad. This reality inflamed many whites. Race riots swept the North each summer from 1919 to 1921. It was a period of overt and casual racism.”

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“In 1927, more than 26 million Americans were going to the movies each week. What they saw reaffirmed the tradition of blackface entertainment that had prevailed since slavery”

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“Of all media, cartoons provided the best form of racial caricature. In this fantasy world, physical distortion and violence were comic”

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“Against this [European standard of beauty], Africans and African-Americans were compared. Historically, these [caricature] images reinforce the psychology that black is ugly. To be natural, or to be yourself, or to be the way you were presented in this world is ugly”

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“According to myth, slavery then segregation had managed to domesticate black Americans. But without white control, [they] reverted to savagery”

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“The Civil Rights Movement brought deep contradictions in America to a head. Restrictive molds cast before the Civil War finally began to crumble, 100 years later”

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“By the late '60s, the more extreme caricatures had begun a slow death. But did this mean an end to the more subtle forms of racial stereotyping?”

“These characters did as much harm as any lynch mob. True, their hurt was often indirect. Yet because of this, they left wounds that have proved far more difficult to heal”

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“This is the black cop [...] who is engaged in fighting the forces of evil. The reason I say that this goes back to the old stereotype is that there's an emphasis on violence and brutality”