(Joice Heth) ben horwitz with some technical difficulties

(Joice Heth) ben horwitz with some technical difficulties

c. 1835, Joice Heth represented the beginnings of PT Barnum's career in the circus, but her success bore testament to PT Barnum's ability to recognize and exploit the desires of the American public. As given by the Thompson quote below, Americans were thirsty to reconnect to the Revolutionary war— and what better way to do so than with a living, breathing, (though not moving) person? Barnum's prowess in advertising and 'selling' the spectacle is evidenced in this poster, and it serves as an interesting foreshadowing to Barnum's future success (and indeed, the importance of posters themselves). Particularly, this is also significant because Barnum is PURCHASING a woman (who is not as human as she might be if she weren't black). This exploitation is readily apparent in this poster.


'Research Historian May V. Thompson commented on understanding the absurdity of the story of Heth:

“Joice Heth came on the scene just 3 years after the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s birth and nine years after the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Americans were feeling the Revolutionary War generation slipping away, at a time when sectional differences leading up to the Civil War, were escalating. They were desperate to hold on to that earlier, ‘purer’ time, and thus were willing to suspend rational thought to believe that an elderly African-American woman could actually be over 150 years old and the former nursemaid of an infant George Washington.” (From Mt. Vernon's Website: http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-man-the-myth/joice-heth/)

Printed by
J. Booth & Son, 147 Fulton St NY

Heth, Joice, d. 1836
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891

http://www.hrvh.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/shs/id/21