ericans in text and/or illustration appears to be related to shifting views of race relations in American culture and society. In Culture and Conflict, authors Pescosolido, Grauerholz, and Milkie investigate illustrations or images of Blacks in U.S. childrenÆs literature between 1937 and 1993. It is not only the inclusion of negative or stereotypical imagery that can undermine a cultureÆs validity and provide negative perspectives to child readers but it is also the symbolic annihilation of African American their absence. In reviewing a variety of books from this period, the authors maintain that the relationship between text and illustration depended on larger socially-oriented views of race, maintaining the books show ôthe power struggles, reflected in racial conflict in the larger society as they relate to symbolic representationàstereotypes of blacks may not have been eliminated but changed in character, taking subtler and more indirect forms,ö (Pescosolido, et al., p. 444-45).
The authorsÆ six-decade study reveals that before the Civil War some childrenÆs novels contained Black characters and illustrations of Black characters that were as multi-dimensional as the central characters in them. However, over the period in question, they find a nonlinear portrayal of Black characters over time. They divide this repre
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