ABC in Dixie : a plantation alphabet
ABC in Dixie is a 1908 alphabet picture book published in London by Ernest Nister and in New York by E.P. Dutton, with illustrations by Willard Bonte and text by Louise Quarles Bonte, aimed at young children. The four colour plates show caricatured Black figures in plantation-era dress: a man with an axe, a man in a green jacket with a rooster tail, a barefoot girl in a yellow skirt, and a woman in a striped dress carrying a basket. Their bold outlines, flat washes of colour and exaggerated features show the stereotyped print style of its period, useful to designers studying early twentieth-century juvenile illustration and as a historical caution about racist imagery.
