Puck front cover, from 1882, showing President Chester A. Arthur — beside a large white elephant with the likeness of Roscoe Conkling — wondering "How shall I ever get rid of him? It won't do to have him on my hands in 1884". Although he is referring to the year of the next election, it is oddly resonant in the context of Toung Taloung and co.
Featured on PDR in the essay Race and the White Elephant War of 1884
Feuding impresarios, a white-but-not-white-enough elephant, and racist ads for soap — Ross Bullen on how a bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race, and inadvertently laid bare the ideological constructions at their heart.
Also appearing in the essay…
Arthur's Awkward “White Elephant”
Artist
Date
1882
From
Puck, v. 11, no. 262
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