Every year when Valentine’s Day comes around, there’s a spate of news articles or blog rants criticizing the holiday for being a shameless commercial ploy to get people to go out and buy pink and red junk: heart-shaped balloons, indulgent sweets, gigantic stuffed animals, and cards with flattering poetry.
Harvey Young, an associate professor of African-American studies and performance at Northwestern University, is not a Valentine’s Day hater. This morning his wife will receive a bouquet of flowers, a card, and chocolates. However, he says he’s not terribly keen on how the commercial exchanges that supposedly measure love and devotion get confined to a single day of the year.
But it’s not just the provincialism of February 14 that makes Mr. Young a little critical. About three years ago at an auction he stumbled across a dozen racist Valentine’s Day cards, dating from 1905 to 1920, that shocked him and changed his perspective on the day. He now has more than 200 of these cards, which he has collected for research on a forthcoming book about how caricatures of black people informed everyday discourse on race and perpetuated racial discrimination. In a talk titled “A Racist Love Note: Black Stereotypes in Valentines,” that he is scheduled to present on Thursday, Mr. Young will discuss what his research shows about why some Americans sent sinister messages about black people on a day purportedly devoted to love.
The Chronicle interviewed Mr. Young by telephone to ask about how his card collection fits into the evolution of Valentine’s Day in American culture. Here is an edited version of the exchange:
Q. How did you feel the first time you saw those racist Valentine’s Day cards at that auction, and did your emotions about them change as your collection grew?
A. At the time I was going to auctions looking for images of black people. When I first saw these Valentine cards, I was shocked and horrified that depictions of racial stereotypes and violence could be used on a day that recognizes love. I was also intrigued by how people used these cards as a way of expressing their sincere and honest emotions about another person. The act of sending the card to another person shows that they shared the sense of humor the cards carried, and there was a similarity in thinking about race. The person who received the card on Valentine’s Day was not going to be horrified when they opened it.
As I spent more and more time with the cards, I moved beyond the shock and horror. I began to categorize them, and I paid close attention to the messages written on their backs as a way of trying to find logic to their existence. The cards in their entirety tell a story about a historical moment in American history. They reveal the wide acceptance of racial stereotypes in the early 20th century and demonstrate one way in which those beliefs were sustained and helped justify segregation.
Q. How do your cards fit into the historical evolution of Valentine’s Day?
A. No one really knows exactly how Valentine’s Day began. It’s a bunch of myths that range from naming a patron saint to celebrating pagan festivals. The story goes that St. Valentine illegally wed couples, was arrested, and then executed. He becomes a martyr for standing up to the law and marrying people. Much later, a culture slowly emerged where people started fabricating their own cards and creating their own gifts. Those who participated had the means and leisure time. In the United States, the mass manufacturing of Valentine cards emerged during the 1840s and 1850s, when there were ad campaigns telling people that they should go out and buy cards to show that they loved somebody. It has always been a commercial holiday. My cards are from the very early 20th century, from 1905 to the late 1920s. They, too, are mass-produced, readily available, and fall in the category of satirical and humorous cards that traffic in ideas about race.
Q. Who were the primary purchasers of these old, racist consumer items, and did African-Americans buy these cards during the height of their production?
A. I do not view African-Americans as the primary consumers or the targeted consumers of these cards. I would argue that the primary consumers were people who agreed with the representations of black men, women, and children on those cards. These were not greeting cards manufactured for members of the Ku Klux Klan. They were mainstream cards available for purchase at the Walgreens and Duane Reade of their day. The cards, for example, often make lighthearted references to lynching, slavery, and impending violence. The cards are almost always written in bastardized English: “Is yo’ mah Valentine?” Not surprisingly, images of watermelons and cotton bales with black adults and, in particular, children in tattered clothes abound in this genre. With images of playful black adults, and particularly children, they often strive to create a sense of blackness as playful, childlike, and joyous. These cards were popular through the 1940s, and they circulated everywhere. They were not just sent by people who were locked in a certain geographical location, who subscribed to this racial logic. The cards are concrete proof that this racial discourse was a national one.
Q. Do you see a connection between modern-day assumptions about African-Americans and commodities produced during segregation?
A. I don’t see these items as having a measurable impact upon African-American communities in terms of how they viewed love, dating, and marriage. At this time period, blacks saw their segregated communities as places full of role models, where love could exist, and where self-esteem and pride in blackness were nourished. As the racist cards and other consumer items circulated on the outside, they did not undermine notions of black love or the foundation of black marriage. It was the widespread circulation of racist Valentine cards that created a societal assumption that there was something problematic about black love, dating, and marriage. That’s the real impact. It is when those assumptions get perpetuated through a variety of media that these assumptions of the failure of black love occurs and is sometimes internalized.
I’m not trying to ruin Valentine’s Day. I hope that by looking at these cards from an earlier period in time will compel contemporary Valentine-card purchasers to ask how the cards they send to others reflect who they are.
