Undercover Reporting

The popular humorist often used the undercover ruse in his work for The New York Tribune. In this instance, he posed as a client to visit a number of New York's purveyors of the "black arts" to expose their scams. The series preceded his pose as a slave buyer to cover the Butler auction in Savannah.

Ray Sprigle, a white reporter from Pittsburgh, goes undercover as a light-skinned black man in the deep south.