An advertisement for Italian Paste Blacking, a paste for boots, has an image of a Black child holding a boot. The image is framed, it appears within an oval. The image is about 2.5″ x 2″, an illustration of a Black person. The dealer of rare, old newspapers, Stephen A. Goldman Historical Newspapers, has been in the business of buying and selling historical newspapers for over 45 years. He claims this “is the EARLIEST USE of an African-American image I have ever seen to sell a specific product.”
The oval frame contains words that are difficult to read but they include the word “BOOTQUICK”.