Subseries contains sheet music for compositions and popular songs written between the 1840s and 1930s about the telegraph, in honor of notable events and figures in telegraph history, or referencing the telegraph. Earlier items in this subseries include a quick-step dedicated to Samuel F. B. Morse shortly after the first demonstration of his electric telegraph (1844), as well as numerous compositions dedicated to Cyrus W. Field, written to commemorate the laying of the first operational transatlantic cable. Sheet music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries includes popular songs, some of which were written for minstrel acts, to be performed by white singers in blackface. These include “I Guess I’ll Have to Telegraph My Baby” (1899), written by the composer, actor, playwright, and producer George M. Cohan, along with songs written in response to Cohan’s.

Content Statement: Items in this subseries include sheet music for songs written for minstrel shows, a genre of performance built around racist, stereotypical depictions of African Americans. Blackface minstrelsy was a popular form of entertainment in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries onstage, on film, and in private, at-home entertainment, as reflected by this mass-produced sheet music. Minstrel shows featured white performers in blackface, speaking in stereotypical dialect and acting out situations that depicted Black people in a degrading, disrespectful manner. These items contain racist, derogatory language and imagery associated with blackface minstrel performances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.