"Tom Two Arrows" is coming: an American dancer billed in Kuala Lumpur

An English-language poster distributed in Kuala Lumpur and filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 21 January 1957. A colour photograph of a man in a feathered roach headdress and beaded regalia, hands raised as if mid-dance, sits under the headline "TOM TWO ARROWS" IS COMING ! It gives no date, venue or sponsor (NAID 6949109).

Five words and a photograph

The whole printed text is a name and an announcement. The archive transcribes it in two lines, the name in quotation marks.

"TOM TWO ARROWS"

IS COMING !

Below the headline is a colour photograph. The archive describes a man in a feathered roach headdress, bead armbands, a necklace and beaded regalia, with his hands raised as if mid-dance. That is all the sheet holds. It gives no date, no venue and no sponsor.

What the catalog adds

The National Archives record adds a little. It files the sheet in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, maker line "U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Dept. IIE Program)." The catalog title places it in Kuala Lumpur, and the catalog date is 21 January 1957. FRAME classes the source as blurred, records the purpose as "Warn or inform," and lists one theme: race and ethnicity.

A teaser with the details left for later

FRAME is cautious here. Its note says the poster makes no argument, and that the nearest technique is transfer: the novelty and appeal of an American performer are put in front of the audience for an organizer the sheet does not name. The record holds only this sheet, so the tour behind it, if there was one, is not described here.

The race-and-ethnicity theme is the record's, and the record explains it only through the picture. The performer is presented to a Malayan public through his regalia and his dance, under a name set in quotation marks. The sheet tells viewers nothing else about him: not where he came from, and not what he would perform. Whatever the agency meant to say about Americans by billing him, the sheet says it with a photograph alone.

The civil rights era messaging hub gathers USIA sheets on American race relations. Other performer bills from the same files include Marian Anderson in Taipei and Louis Armstrong in Beirut.