There were a lot of things about “A Coon Alphabet” that were very striking. The language, the title. What really shocked me was the illustrations. The illustrations in the Coon Alphabet are pretty horrifying. To me, they dehumanized black people and almost made them seem animal-like. I found it so disturbing. It was seemingly meant to be a comedy, however I did some background research on this book. It was written after the Civil War, and during this time there were many books backing up the decision to free the slaves and show how horribly they were treated. However, according to digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu, this book was written to prove that blacks were

“deserving of their ill-treatment.”

Also, during this time, racial stereotypes were commonly used in writing and illustrations in children’s books. This was also during a time where white actors would put on “blackface”. The author, Edward Windsor Kemble, was a well-known “artist” for his cartoon of soldiers, Indians and blacks.