The History Issue

February/March 2006

Another American Skin(s) Game

On the run from Hilton Head to Harlem—the high stakes of black history

The American print industry sprang to life in the first half of the 19th century. Some of the earliest mass produced advertisements emerged during this period. Frozen among them, rear foot in the air, stick and bundle over his shoulder, is the runaway slave. In the 1840’s, printing houses and newspapers looking to generate revenue with slave ads could lay out $1.50 for a woodcut engraving or 20¢ for the smaller metal printing ornament. Type foundries in the northeast, like L. Johnson & Co. of Philadelphia would then manufacture and ship the plates. Within days, ads could flow fresh off the press and hot on the trail of another escaped slave.