Your Money's No Good: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Sheet music for the song Your Money's No Good. The cover is black and white with black type set against a white background. There is a black and white photograph of a man in blackface in proper left of the cover. Next to the photograph, in the center of the cover, there is an illustration of a caricatured African American in clothing adorned with dollar symbols, who is standing next to a woman in a dress saying "No No!" several times. The black type at the top of the cover reads: [YOUR MONEY'S / NO GOOD ]. Below the photograph, black type reads: [WORDS AND MUSIC / BY / LEE JOHNSON / COMPOSER OF / "MA ANGELINE" "MY HONOLULU LADY" / "THE BELLE OF HONOLULU" "MA CAROLINE" ETC / AND / J. Dewey]. Underneath the illustrations, black type reads: [A / COONTOWN / DISAGREEMENT]. There is a publisher’s logo at the bottom of the cover that reads: [Published / By / Lee, Johnson & Co. / 41 Geary St. / San Francisco CA.]. The number 5 is next to the logo. There are dollar signs around the edges of the cover. The back side of the cover has sheet music on it in black ink.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: ca. 1900
• Composed by: Lee Johnson
• Published by: Lee, Johnson & Co., American
• Owned by: Mary Elizabeth Sugg, American, 1839 - 1915
• Owned by: Vernon Sugg McDonald, American, 1906 - 1982
• Type: sheet music
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 14 1/16 × 10 7/8 in. (35.7 × 27.6 cm)
• Place collected: Sonora, Tuolumne County, California, United States, North and Central America
• Place printed: San Francisco, California, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Blackface
• Topic: Caricature and cartoons
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Topic: Stereotypes
• Object number: 2014.275.7
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Sylvia Alden Roberts
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public Domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.