Content note: Racial show poster: uses the word 'negress' and 'Negerin' and caricatured, dehumanising faces of Black figures as billing for a human-display act This object is shown as it was published. Why
Negresse blanche / The white negress / Die weisse Negerin: Amanoua Kpapo (show poster, c. 1910)
Tall narrow show poster headed 'Negresse blanche': a pale-skinned woman with a spear and a tall pale hairdo stands in a starburst before palms and huts, with 'The white negress / Die weisse Negerin' lettered beside her. Below, a crowd of dark-skinned figures with bulging eyes and open mouths gapes up at her. The tell: a loaded racial label is the billing, and the exaggerated faces of the crowd turn people into a caricature (name-calling) to sell a spectacle.
- Date
- 1910
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Showman or printer not named on the visible sheet; billing for the performer Amanoua Kpapo
- Country
- German Empire
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Corporation
- Regime
- German Empire
- Leader
- Wilhelm II
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Leader
- Wilhelm II
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain: Commons PD-old-70, undated c. 1910 (pre-1931, US)
Unknown author, c. 1910; reproduced in Rea Brandle, Nayo Bruce (2007), p. 68; via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
NEGRESSE BLANCHE THE WHITE NEGRESS DIE WEISSE NEGERIN [small circular printer's stamp at left of the lettering, illegible]
White negress. The white negress. The white negress (feminine).
Wording reproduced as printed, offensive terms included. The tiny stamp is illegible at this resolution. Translation is FRAME's own literal rendering.
