Old ads · Offensive Advertising

Offensive Advertising

Racist images that whisky makers and their printers used to sell drink, from 1859 to 1937.

By Bryen Beglinger

Warning. This page shows racist caricatures of Black Americans, mocking dialect, and one poster with nudity. The images are offensive. They are shown below only after you choose to open them.

Why this page exists

These images do not reflect the views of this site or of anyone who works on it. Showing them is not saying they were ever okay. They were not okay when they were printed, and they are not okay now.

They stay viewable because they happened. For most of a century, some of the best known names in American whisky sold their product with pictures like these, and that part of the record rarely comes up when old bottles are discussed. It was a dark time in our history. We should know about it, so we know the history we came from. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University, which keeps one of the largest public collections of this material, puts it this way: "items of intolerance can be used to teach tolerance."

These pages hold the rest of the old advertising: Old whisky ads.

How whisky used these images

None of this was special to whisky. The young advertising business of the late 1800s spread the same caricatures across baking powder, coffee, molasses, soap and drink. One study of trade cards from 1876 to 1900 found that up to 40 percent of the cards in a typical museum collection used ethnic stereotypes. Lithographers kept stock drawings and sold the same picture to more than one client, which is why the first two labels below share a figure.

Whisky's version had two stages. Before Prohibition the labels and posters leaned on the minstrel stage: exaggerated faces, loud clothes, dialect, and the plantation myth of happy enslaved people. Bourbon in particular sold "Old Kentucky," and the faithful old servant came with it. Legal whisky advertising stopped for Prohibition. When it came back after Repeal in December 1933, the caricatures mostly gave way to the smiling waiter, porter or butler, drawn or photographed more realistically but still there only to serve. Historians of advertising date the real change to the middle 1960s, driven, in one historian's words, by "pioneers, activists, government action and business self-interest."

I understand. Show the material.

Before Prohibition

Star Whiskey, about 1859. C. L. Dixon of Cynthiana, Kentucky, with a New York agent, sold his whisky under a minstrel figure, the "Jim Crow" stage character, with a dialect line in a speech balloon. The Library of Congress holds a whole lot of whisky labels from the 1850s and 1860s that its own catalog describes as including "caricatures of African Americans."

Round whisky label with a red, white and blue star around a caricatured Black man in a straw hat and checked trousers walking with a dog and a bottle, with a dialect speech balloon, Star Whiskey, C. L. Dixon, Cynthiana, Ky. — Star Whiskey, C. L. Dixon, Cynthiana, Kentucky, about 1859. A minstrel stage figure, with a dialect line in a speech balloon.Robertson, Seibert & Shearman, lithographers, New York, published about 1859. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-70025.

Six pointed star label reading Very Fine and Old Bourbon Whiskey with the same caricatured walking figure and speech balloon as the Star Whiskey label — The same drawing, sold again with no maker's name. This was stock art.Whisky label, published between 1850 and 1880, copyright deposit. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-6493.

Essence of Old Virginia, 1859. A. M. Bininger & Co. of 19 Broad Street, New York, put a scene of enslaved people dancing to a banjo next to a whisky barrel on its wheat whisky, with white men in top hats watching. It was printed two years before the Civil War.

Shield shaped label headed Essence of Old Virginia showing caricatured Black men and women dancing and playing the banjo beside a whisky barrel while white men in top hats watch, A. M. Bininger and Co., Wheat Whiskey — Essence of Old Virginia, A. M. Bininger & Co., New York, 1859. A dance scene sold as Southern charm, two years before the Civil War.Sarony, Major & Knapp, lithographers, New York, published 1859. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-6494.

Belle of Nelson, 1882. This Louisville poster is also in the 1880s gallery for its nude bathers. It belongs here too. The one Black woman in the picture is the servant, offering water pipes to the white women at the pool.

Chromolithograph of a harem bath with nude and half dressed white women, a Black woman attendant in a turban and robe holding water pipes, and the words Belle of Nelson Old Fashion Hand Made Sour Mash Whiskey — Belle of Nelson, Louisville, 1882. The Black woman is the servant in a fantasy harem. Contains nudity.Wells & Hope Co., lithographers, Philadelphia, October 2, 1882, copyright deposit. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-03041.

Rye and Rock, 1884. Not an ad, but whisky imagery sold to the same public. Currier & Ives, the New York printmakers whose sleigh rides and farm scenes still hang in American homes, also sold racist comic prints, and they sold well. Thomas Worth, who drew this one, is best known for their Darktown series. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says of those prints that they "depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing." The title is a pun on rock and rye, a bar drink of the day.

Currier and Ives comic print of a caricatured Black man in ragged winter clothes sitting on a rock in a stormy sea, fishing and drinking from a bottle labeled Rye, titled Rye and Rock, signed Thos. Worth — Rye and Rock, Currier & Ives, drawn by Thomas Worth, 1884. A comic print, not an ad, sold to the same public that bought the whisky.Thomas Worth, Rye and Rock, published by Currier & Ives, New York, copyright March 5, 1884. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-09759.

Green River, 1902. J. W. McCulloch of Owensboro, Kentucky, a former federal tax collector, made Green River "The Whiskey Without a Headache." The picture of an old Black man leading an animal loaded with a jug of Green River ran in newspapers across the South, here in Montgomery, Alabama. The caption is the title of a sentimental song from 1898. In this version the animal is a horse. Later versions show a mule, and the image was registered as a trade mark again as late as 2004.

Newspaper ad headed The Whiskey Without a Headache showing an elderly Black man in a top hat and long coat holding a saddled horse carrying a jug of Green River Whiskey, captioned She Was Bred in Old Kentucky, McCulloch the Distiller, Owensboro — Green River, Owensboro, Kentucky, 1902. The faithful old servant of the plantation myth, under the title of a popular song.The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, Ala., November 14, 1902, page 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

The news pages, 1920. Not an ad either, but it shows the same habit in the paper around the ads. When a case of Haig & Haig leaked on a Manhattan pier in September 1920, the Evening World wrote up the longshoremen who drank it in mocking minstrel dialect. The rest of Haig & Haig's story is here.

Newspaper column headlined Pier Riot Follows Leak in Shipment of Haig and Haig, written in mocking dialect about a Black longshoreman — The news pages did it too. The Evening World, New York, 1920.The Evening World, New York, September 10, 1920, page 4. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

After Repeal

These three ads are linked, not shown, because their copyright status has not been cleared.

Four Roses, November 1934. The first Thanksgiving after Repeal. Frankfort Distilleries ran a full page photograph of a grinning Black waiter carrying a flaming plum pudding. American Legion Monthly, on the Internet Archive.

Golden Wedding, December 1934. A Schenley brand. A redcap porter tells a white traveler, in dialect, that Golden Wedding Rye averages four years old. LIFE, page 31, on the Internet Archive. Schenley's own story is here.

Paul Jones, August 1937. A photograph of a smiling Black waiter holding up a tray, with the headline in his mouth: "Seems like they're all calling for a DRY whiskey!" The man in the photograph was a real person whose name was not printed. The fault is the ad's. LIFE, on the Internet Archive.

Where the sources disagree

Star Whiskey's date. The Library of Congress dates it about 1859 from the years its printer was in business. One collector blog calls it an 1870s ad.

Green River's start. A 1918 fire report says McCulloch built the distillery about 1887. The bourbon historian Michael Veach says Green River was introduced in 1891.

Rye and Rock and Darktown. Worth drew the Darktown prints, but the Library of Congress does not catalog Rye and Rock as part of that series. It is shown here as a Worth comic print from the same years.

The 1911 Pepper ad. A lead said a 1911 James E. Pepper ad in Judge magazine was racist. All 52 issues of Judge from 1911 were checked. Every Pepper ad that year shows a colonial gentleman. The racist joke on that page sits in the column beside the ad, not in it.

Sources

Star Whiskey label, Library of Congress. loc.gov and the whisky label lot loc.gov
Very Fine & Old Bourbon Whiskey label, Library of Congress. loc.gov
Essence of Old Virginia, Library of Congress. loc.gov
Belle of Nelson, Library of Congress. loc.gov
Rye and Rock, Library of Congress. loc.gov
Thomas Worth, Delaware Art Museum. delart.org
Darktown print, catalog note, Metropolitan Museum of Art. metmuseum.org
The Montgomery Advertiser, November 14, 1902, page 8. loc.gov
Michael R. Veach, "Brand History: Green River Whiskey," 2020. bourbonveach.com
The Evening World, New York, September 10, 1920, page 4. loc.gov
David Pilgrim, "Why I Collect Racist Objects," Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University. ferris.edu
David Pilgrim, "The Mammy Caricature," Jim Crow Museum. ferris.edu
Livia Gershon, "The Racism of 19th-Century Advertisements," JSTOR Daily, 2019, on Marilyn Maness Mehaffy in Signs, 1997. jstor.org
Jason Chambers, Madison Avenue and the Color Line, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, University of Illinois news release. illinois.edu
Kenneth W. Goings, Mammy and Uncle Mose, Indiana University Press, 1994, catalog record. aspendiscovery.org
American Legion Monthly, November 1934. archive.org
LIFE, December 1934, page 31. archive.org
LIFE, August 16, 1937. archive.org
Judge, January 28, 1911. archive.org