Judge, 1894-12-01 · page 20 of 20
Judge — December 1, 1894 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a racist caricature cartoon from Judge magazine mocking Black Americans. The satirical "joke" depicts a football game between "Blackville" and "Shantytown" where the Blackville team supposedly wins by an absurd margin (80-6) only after their manager paints the football to look like a watermelon—playing on a dehumanizing racial stereotype that associated Black people with watermelon consumption. The cartoon ridicules Black athletic ability while reinforcing demeaning stereotypes. The exaggerated caricatured faces of the players, the dialect in the caption, and the overall setup are characteristic of late 19th/early 20th-century American racist humor that Judge regularly published. The "humor" relies entirely on dehumanization and racial prejudice.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
E 5 9 n x ° fe) 2 2 E 5 cs) HOW THE GREAT FOOT-BALL GAME WAS WON. It was Blackville vs. Shantytown, and the Blackvilles had no chance until their manager was inspired to paint the ball like a watermelon. ResULT—Blackvilles, 80; Shantytowns, 6,