Illustration of a person's white nose and black open mouth with a small mustache. The large nose is inhaling a green vapor or smell. There are blue tears coming from the eyes and the background is peach.

This button was created as part of the Busy Beaver Button Co.'s Button-O-Matic 2004 series "stinky, scary or hairy". It included three buttons by Jesse Ledoux including this one for "stinky".

Jesse Ledoux is an art director who does album cover and posters and is the owner of the LeDouxville, a company that sells designs. He originally worked for Sub Pop Records and has won several awards for his artwork. 

Illustration of the back of a nude person with their neck and head coming out of their back, with white text above and below on a redish-purple background.

This button is from the 1965 series of LEAF "Fink Buttons" illustrated by popular Mid-Century artist Basil Wolverton. Perhaps best known for his work at MAD Magazine, Basil Wolverton (July 9, 1909 – December 31, 1978) was an American cartoonist and illustrator famous for his humorously grotesque drawings. Wolverton worked in the "Golden Age" of comic books doing features like "Powerhouse Pepper" and "Spacehawk" in the 1940s. A 2009 New York Times article states that Wolverton’s drawings embodied the “sick-and-proud humor” of MAD magazine and were considered a “virtuoso exercise in bad taste, made all the weirder for being so meticulously executed."

An illustration of a man wearing a white blazer and a shirt with the Jagermeister symbol on it holding a shot in his left hand. The "Jagermeister Liqueur" text is black and the "... so smooth" text is orange. The background is white.

Jägermeister is a German alcohol made with 56 herbs and spices. It is the flagship product of Mast-Jägermeister SE, headquartered in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. Sidney Frank, known for his creation of Grey Goose vodka, spotted German immigrants in New York drinking Jagermeister in the 1970s, and purchased the U.S. import rights. Sales were poor until some students were quoted in a Baton Rouge Atlantic article suggesting the drink was an aphrodisiac. Frank jumped on the story, and assembled a team to hand out copies of the article and ran some memorable billboard ads that played on its strong flavor. Frank’s promotional tactics worked. A drink that was once used as a field anesthetic by doctors in World War II, had become popular among party goers and bar hoppers alike.

White text on a red background. 

The Independent Order of St. Luke (IOSL) was a mutual benefit society founded in 1867. This organization played a prominent role in the history of African-American women. For 35 years it was led by Maggie Lena Walker (c. 1867-1934), a teacher and activist who eventually became the first female bank president in the United States. The IOSL’s original purpose was to provide for the care of the sick and burial of the dead, although its activities expanded over the decades to include youth programs, economic assistance such as insurance and mortgages, and political activism. When Walker took over the organization in 1899 it was in decline, but under her leadership it grew from 1,085 members to over 100,000.

The IOSL was focused on improving the financial independence of the African-American community during the Jim Crow era. In 1903 Walker founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, VA, which served African-American clients, many of whom were women. Under her direction the IOSL also began publishing the St. Luke Herald, a newspaper that reported on the injustices faced by African-Americans, including segregation and lynching. The IOSL disbanded in the 1980s.

Ewing, A. (2005). Independent Order of St. Luke. In Black Women in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Image of two ballerinas. The ballerina on the left is wearing a green tutu and whispering into the ear of another ballerina to the right who is holding her hand over the opposite ear. 

The painting on this button is visually similar to the painting "Two Dancers 2" by Edgar Degas. The button image has his signature in the upper right.

White text on a blue background.

Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity. Between 1910 and 1911 Béla Schick developed the Schick test to detect preexistent immunity to diphtheria in an exposed person. Only those who were not exposed to diphtheria were preferably vaccinated. A massive five-year campaign was coordinated by Dr. Schick. As a part of the campaign, 85 million pieces of literature were distributed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company with an appeal to parents to "Save your child from diphtheria." A vaccine was developed in the next decade, and deaths began declining significantly in 1924.

Blue and orange print, all capital letters, saying "I'm with Stupid" with right hand index finger pointing out on white background.

“I’m with stupid” is a humorous insult commonly seen on t-shirts, with a hand pointing in one direction. The phrase is sometimes paired with a t-shirt worn by a second person stating “I’m stupid”. 

A pink thumbprint with an illustrated face and limbs below black text on a white background. 

Thumbody was created by Peter Petraglia, the creative director at Princeton Partners in 1971 as part of a financial services campaign sold to banks and credit unions across the United States. Thumbody was based on one of the agency partner’s own fingerprint. As part of the I’m Thumbody program ads, posters, shirts, banks, pins and other promotional items were created with the Thumbody design.

The text is black and centered on a white background. A red and white checkerboard acts as a border.

The phrase "I'm out for a wild time" typically means that someone wants to show a lack of restraint and have no inhibitions. This phrase, which likely became popular in the mid twentieth century, is still used today. 

An illustration of a bearded man holding a cane or pool stick and wearing a black hat and a black coat. His eyes are black rectangles and have black lines moving from them and his skin is a pale white. He is standing in front of an orange, yellow, black, and red painting on a grey easel.

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