Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Ragamuffins

More Depression-era P.L.Sperr.  This time he's taking pictures of Thanksgiving Ragamuffins, precursors to the Halloween trick-or-treaters.  The year is 1933.



















Greenwich Village



















Christopher Street



















Hudson Street



















Hudson Street



















Hudson Street & "Village Monmartre Apache Girls"




















Near Columbus Circle, and 61st Street



















Columbus Circle, Staten Island



Sperr refers to one set of girls in the photographs as "boys, of course," and it looks like there are plenty of other cross-dressing ragamuffins here. And maybe a cross-dressing girl or two. Of the boys at left in the last picture he writes, "these ragamuffins really are colored" - a depressing acknowledgement of the number of ragamuffins appearing in blackface - and he mentions the African-American, "San Juan" neighborhood, in the West 60's.  I haven't included any pictures of blackface ragamuffins - they have no place here -  but you can see more of Sperr's ragamuffin pictures in the NYPL Digital Collection archives.



No comments: