In the North, during the 1850s, the growing number of free Blacks increased anxiety among some Whites who feared competition from them in the labour market and the possibility that they would continue to make social gains towards eventual racial equality. Fearing the release of Blacks from slavery and the crumbling of the southern economy, visual and performative caricatures of African Americans by Whites proliferated, depicting a world of Blacks who enjoyed being slaves. Their political function was to convince viewers that keeping Blacks in slavery was not only the right thing to do, but the benevolent responsibility to a race of people who were not quite human enough to survive on their own.

Bridget R. Cooks Fixing race: visual representations of African Americans at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893