An advertisement for “Green’s August Flower,” sold by Keen Brothers, Druggists, Wiconisco, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. Versions of the ad for this product appeared 31 times in the Lykens Standard, but between 1904 and 1905, the above version that featured a Black caricature “speaking” or “singing” in dialect, appeared seven times.
The child is playing a banjo and is standing next to a howling dog.
DIS AM DE BES’ SONG DAT I EBER SUNG….
On de banks ob de Amazon, far away, far away Whar Dr. Green gits August Flowers to dis day; Ah picked dose flowers in August in ole Brazil, An 'aldo' I'se a Yankee, ah longs to be dar still.
NATURE’S GREAT INVENTION
August Flower is the only medicine (free from alcoholic stimulants) that has been successful in keeping the entire thirty-two feet of digestive apparatus in a normal condition, and assisting nature’s processes of digestion, separation and absorption – for building an rebuilding – by preventing ALL irregular or unnatural causes which interrupt healthy and perfect natural processes and result in intestinal indigestion, catarrhal affections (causing appendicitis – stoppage of the gall duct), fermentation of unhealthy foods, nervous dyspepsia, headache, constipation and other complaints, such as colic, biliousness, jaundice, etc.
August Flower is nature’s intended regulator. Two sizes, 25c, 75c. All druggists.
It is not known why this racist version of the ad was used 7 times, when the other versions, all of which were non-racist were used the remaining 24 times.
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From Newspapers.com.
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