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Start Over Collection David Galt Greenwald games and puzzles collection Date range 2005

Darkies in the Melon Patch Box 4

Darkies in the Melon Patch is a "chutes and ladders" type game using racist language and imagery of racist and stereotyped caricatures of black people navigating a watermelon patch and avoiding a white farmer aiming at them with a gun. This game appears to be a 21st century counterfeit/hoax of black americana material culture. The copyright information provided claims the game was copyrighted in 1932 by a "Hudson Brothers" company at "127 42nd Street, Buffalo, NY", though no such company or location appears to exist, and other sources have given copyright dates as early as 1910. The images on the box cover and game board appear to have been digitally printed and some have computer graphics imposed on images dated to various years between 1910 and 1940.

  1. College of William and Mary
  2. David Galt Greenwald games and puzzles collection
  3. Series 1: Board games and card games

David Galt Greenwald games and puzzles collection 8 Boxes Five oversize boxes, one half Hollinger box, and two rectangle artifact boxes

The David Galt Greenwald board games and puzzles collection consists of black Americana board games, puzzles, card games, and ephemera. Series 1 consists of boxed games, puzzles, and toys, largely depicting racist caricatures, including minstrel/blackface imagery, stereotypes, propaganda, and sometimes anti-black violence. Other items in Series 1 depict black empowerment, history, heritage, culture, and collaboration. Series 2 consists of entertainment-related or associated ephemera, including paper board games and puzzles, toys, a stereoview, a watercolor booklet, Court Whist scorecards, promotional material, and pages of a 1883 almanac. The majority, but not all, of these materials likewise feature minstrel/blackface imagery and racist caricatures and stereotypes. These materials offer insight into the cohesive use and promotion of racist imagery, stereotypes, and rhetoric through entertainment media in the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States and Europe. These materials also offer insight into the use of physical entertainment media during the 20th century to educate the public about the Black Power movement, and black community, history, heritage, and empowerment. Additionally, the collection may offer insights into the sale and popularity of black Americana materials between the 19th and early 21st centuries, with at least one board game likely being a 21st century "hoax" using historical anti-black imagery to feign its true age.

  1. College of William and Mary

Series 1: Board games and card games 7 Box

Twenty-seven boxed board games, card games, puzzles, and toys of black americana material culture. Many of these games use racist terms, imagery, caricatures, and stereotypes of black people, some associated with blackface and minstrel performances, with two games explicitly featuring anti-black racial violence in gameplay. Other games educate about systemic racism and oppression, black history and culture, prominent black figures in American history, and the Black Power politcal movement, often having a collaborative element.

  1. College of William and Mary
  2. David Galt Greenwald games and puzzles collection

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