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[Frederick Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass.] Sulfur Bitters, the Great Blood Purifier.

Boston: A. P. Ordway & Co., [ca. 1882]. Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, Lith. Chromolithograph, 6.25” x 8.875” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, margins renewed, reinforced on verso with Japanese tissue.

One of the more notorious images in the iconography of Frederick Douglass, being a racist satire used for advertising purposes on the rear wrapper of a booklet issued by a manufacturer of “sulfur bitters.” 

Douglass and his white wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, are shown just outside a pharmacy where a display of “Sulphur Bitters The Great Blood Purifier” appears in the window, a box of which is tucked into Frederick’s arm. A conversation ensues between two boys nearby: “News Boy: Hi, Yi, Der Jimmy Whose Dem Folkses Whats Got De Sulphur Bitters? Boot Black: I Spec Dats Fred. Douglass And His Wife Golly He Is Going To Take De Sulphur Bitters For His Complexion-.” A grinning cat and dog look on. 

Following the death of his first wife, Anna, Douglass married Helen Pitts, to whom he’d grown close after she began working as a copyist in his office when he served as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. The couple married essentially in secret on January 24th, 1884, but the marriage did not remain secret for long, and the news of it was greeted as nothing less than a racially transgressive bombshell in quarters both Black and white. The attitude expressed is this satire is representative of a common reaction to the news of this high-profile interracial marriage.

This image was originally issued as part of a Sulphur Bitters bifolium advertising circular.

Item #9778

Price: $2,750.00

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