Hoosier Who in the KKK

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us back to Indiana in 1926, when a Senate investigation exposed the extensive influence of the Ku Klux Klan — the MAGA movement of its day — in that state's Republican Party.

“These were the people who held their communities together. They were not the criminal element, they were not the psychopaths, sickos and all that. These were average white people that took an oath to forever support white supremacy.” — Timothy Egan:  A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

"Knosternation in Indiana" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 7, 1926

In the fall of 1926, Senator James Reed (D-MO) was in Chicago conducting hearings into the exorbitant sums of money that had poured into Senate campaigns in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and Indiana politics got tangled up in the allegations made in those hearings. Klan influence in the state's GOP was already well known; it was the influence of Klan money that made it an issue for Reed's investigation.

"Feet of Clay" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 9, 1926

Thomas Adams, editor and publisher of the Vincennes Commercial, printed allegations by former Grand Dragon of the KKK David Curtis Stephenson, who was serving time for rape and murder, of political graft and intrigue. Just two years earlier, Stephenson had bragged that his Klan controlled 85% of the delegates at the Indiana Republican convention (we mentioned that here). Now, Stephenson was upset at not having received a pardon or commutation of his prison sentence from Republican Governor Ed Jackson.

In a letter Adams smuggled out of the Indiana state penitentiary in Michigan City, Stephenson claimed that "a prominent Indiana politician" owed him $825,000 as part of a deal for a campaign contribution. He also named 40 other Indiana politicians, including three mayors, as owing him favors.

"Editors Keep Out" by Bob White in Indianapolis Times, Oct. 6, 1926

Governor Jackson refused demands from Adams, the Indianapolis Times, other members of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association, as well as from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago American, to interview D.C. Stephenson in prison. Instead of quashing the story, however, it was spread across the top of several Indiana newspapers' front pages (yet subordinate to the World Series in others). 

The Times did not have a regular editorial cartoonist on staff in those days, and ran only light humor cartoons on its editorial page; but it found room on its front page for Bob White's cartoon of Stephenson above.

"Dirty Linen" by Grover Page in Courier Journal, Louisville KY, Oct. 18, 1926

By the way, there was nothing unusual about an openly partisan media organization like the Indiana Republican Editorial Association. Many cities had a Republican newspaper and a Democratic newspaper, and everyone knew which was which.

The Republican Party Central Committee of Knox County, Indiana, responded to Mr. Adams's role in this scandal to drum the publisher out of their membership:

"Thomas H. Adams is not a Republican; that his newspaper, the Vincennes Commercial, is not the Republican Party organ for Knox County; and when he speaks, whether personally or through his newspaper, he is not speaking for the Republicans of Knox County. ... It is apparent that the actions and conduct of Mr. Adams for the last six months is a deliberate attempt to defeat the Republican state ticket and the local ticket in this county. His pretended cleanup is not in good faith."

"Indiana's White Elephant" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Oct. 12, 1926

Tom Foley's cartoon calls out specific Indiana Republicans by name: Gov. Jackson, Indianapolis Mayor Duvall, Senators James Eli Watson & Arthur R. Robinson.

Allegations against Senator Watson included that there had been a deal between him and national Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans for Watson, a member of a panel questioning the election of Senator-elect Earl Mayfield (D-TX), to vote in Mayfield's favor in return for Klan support of Watson's 1926 reelection campaign and a possible presidential bid in 1928.

When the Graphical History Tour checked into Indiana's Republican Klansmen during the 1924 elections, here, your Humble Scribbler noted that I could not find any editorial cartoons by Indiana's own Chas Kuhn on the subject. Here again, in spite of the national attention drawn by Senator Reed's hearings (and the banner headlines above Kuhn's cartoons gracing the Indianapolis News's front page), Kuhn appears to have been more interested in Reed's other hearing into mob activity in Chicago.

"Spiked" by Chas Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 23, 1926

The only cartoon Kuhn drew for the Indianapolis News in October about Senator Reed's investigation into the Indianapolis GOP was this one regarding the state's senior Senator.

Senator Jim Watson was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident on his reelection campaign trail, so Senator Reed and a stenographer came from Chicago to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis to hear Watson's statement. Watson and Robinson (the latter at an Indianapolis courtroom) categorically denied any connection to Evans; Watson admitted only to receiving two visits from Klan lawyer William Zumbrunn during the Mayfield hearings conveying the Klan's objection to some of the witnesses before Watson's committee. 

Otherwise, Watson testified, "I met with Dr. Evans several times, and I assume all senators, or practically all, met him at various times, because he was about and was talking to many of them." 

"The Situation at Present" by Karl Kae Knecht in Evansville Courier, Oct. 14, 1926

Elsewhere in Indiana, the Evansville Courier's long-time cartoonist Karl Kae Knecht was less convinced that the scandal had been put to rest. One of the figures holding up the poster blaming the "League o' Nations an' foreign debt thing" is Clyde Walb, Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. The other might be U.S. Secretary of Labor James Davis, a native Hoosier who came home to campaign for the GOP ticket in October; but I can't completely rule out Oren Davis, the Republican candidate for Marion County Sheriff.

"Where Knighthood Was in Klover" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 22, 1926

In time, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series by the Indianapolis Times would bring down Governor Jackson — but not the state Republican party — while internal feuding would tear the Indiana Klan down as well.

Q Toon: Chaos at Kennedy Center

I introduced Max's mother into the Leo and Max series last winter as working in some undefined capacity at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Leo and Max are avatars for the divisions in the Ostensibly United States of America in general; Karen is just my opening for addressing a specific topic.

Open homocon Ric Grenell could have served as my excuse to draw cartoons about the JFK Center; I had drawn a few cartoons about him before Trump named him as his Trump’s chief lieutenant there. But he didn't last very long in that position; his career is in foreign policy after all, not performing arts.

So it turns out that having a recurring character remaining behind among Trump’s lickspittle Board of Misdirectors comes in handy. Leo, the liberal, seems to enjoy needling Karen about Donald Diva Trump’s mission of recreating it as a memorial to himself or razing it to the ground.

I took a risk in drawing this cartoon that the JFK Center would still be standing by the time my cartoon saw print. Trump's modus operandi has been to tear things down before anyone has a chance to stop him (e.g, the East Wing, trees of the East Potomac Golf Links, ethical standards, constitutional norms, and he's still just getting started).

Is it telling that the JFK Center board named a new Artistic Director, but as a contractor, not a hire? No, it's not Kimberly Guilfoyle; it's Rick Canny, who, I hear, has worked with ZZ Top and Tommy Lee, so at least he's not some random Trumpster. Since performers have cancelled in droves, and Executive Director Matthew Floca closed the Center's main building months ago on account of supposed life-safety concerns, however, I'm not clear on what art Mr. Canny has to direct.

The Center's current regime put an end to those rainbow ribbons that came with JFK Center awards, so perhaps Mr. Canny can work on a more Trumpy design for when Trump celebrates giving all the awards to himself. A Confederate flag motif, perhaps.

You can guess whose scowling face will be on the gold-plated marble award medal.

Well, if I keep this up, I'm gonna spoil any possibility of bringing Karen back in a future cartoon, so enough is enough. 

Unless she ends up working along with everybody else from the JFK Center at the Donald Commodius Trump Presidential White House Memorial Ballroom and Bunker for the Performing Arts.

Toon: Meet Mitchell Berman

I thought I'd try caricaturing the Democrat running for Congress in my home district this year, and here's what I came up with. 

Mitchell Berman is an emergency room nurse who won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in August. The national Democratic Party sees potential for him to oust four-term Republican incumbent Bryan Steil, so Berman has gotten the benefit of some television advertising, unlike most Democratic candidates for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District in this century.

If Berman were to win election this November, he would be the first Democrat to represent this district since Rep. Peter Barca was defeated in the Red Wave of 1994. (Barca ran again and lost thirty years later.)

Berman's first TV ad showed him fishing from the banks of a small river somewhere with his dog, offering his bone fides as a regular guy. He wasn't wearing his nurse uniform in that ad; he was, however, wearing a holstered gun on his side — a quiet nod to the sportsmen hereabouts. In a subsequent social media video, he explained that he sometimes goes fishing in areas where one might encounter a bear or wolf. Hence the side arm.

In a preliminary sketch for this caricature, I had a holstered gun at Berman's side. I had to scratch that idea when I switched which hand his fishing rod was held in. 

Most of the mail pieces from Berman's campaign show him in his nurse's scrubs and flag-themed do-rag. His latest TV ad depicts him on the job, talking about health care reform.

Steil, and outside organizations supporting him, are attacking Berman with the same charges of being a radical activist that Republicans are flinging willy-nilly at every Democrat. Steil's ads tout his "Stop Insider Trading Act," prohibiting members of Congress (but not Supreme Court justices, Presidents, or their families) from trading stocks while in office. The bill passed the House with a rider requiring voters to show photo identification before voting, but has not passed the Senate.

Steil's bill has "more holes in it than Swiss cheese," according to Berman, because congressional representatives are not required to divest stocks they already own.

Steil is way ahead of Berman in campaign fund raising: the incumbent's war chest is over $5 million, while Berman's was only $713,000 as of mid-September. Outside interest group advertising is similarly lop-sided in Steil's favor.

This Week's Retro Peek

I'm reposting this panel from a Leo & Max cartoon back in January just as a reminder of Max's mother, Karen, and where she works. 

Leo's family background may get treatment someday. Somehow, they never showed up while Leo was abducted by ICE agents and flown to some s-hole country's civil war, so perhaps they're just not very close. 

Or maybe we just haven't seen them because they're terribly shy.

Dispatches from the Workers Paradise

Today's Graphical History Tour brings us to October of 1926.

Detail from "A Week in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily World, Chicago, Oct. 9, 1926

We have a couple stops in this week's Tour, starting back in the U.S.S.R. 

Last week's post closed with an overly optimistic cartoon by A.G. Racey on the promise of lasting peace (a view shared, to be fair, with several other cartoonists). Marvin Bales's cartoon reminds us that there was no cessation of international rivalries in Europe, nor any shortage of bilateral pacts in defense against them. 

"The Cause of the Pause in Disarmament" by James North in Washington (DC) Post, Oct. 3, 1926

Fears of Russian expansionism, however, united governments in Europe and the United States. James North depicted the League of Nations' Disarmament Conference interrupted by the Russian bear reaching to grab Poland, the Baltic states, and China.

It's interesting that North included Turkey as also threatened by Russian domination. The countries actively discussing taking over and dismembering Kemal Attaturk's Turkey at the time were Italy and Greece.

"These Must Be Heard" by A. Jerger in Daily Worker, Chicago, Oct. 2, 1926

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) held its annual convention in Detroit, in an atmosphere of  alarm over Soviet influence in the worldwide labor movement. Anti-communist prosecution had largely hobbled the "Wobblies" of the International Workers of the World union; the AFL, on the other hand, shunned communist involvement.

"Not the Sort of Recognition I'm After" by Clifford Berryman in Evening Star, Washington DC, Oct. 14, 1926

The 1926 convention unanimously passed a resolution denouncing "the Soviet regime of Russia as the most unscrupulous, most anti-social, most menacing institution in the world today. Between it and our form of political and social organization there can be no compromise of any kind." 

"Through the Red Internationale, which is controlled by the Communist Party of Russia, the Soviet regime has continued its efforts to undermine and destroy the Democratic-Labor movement of the United States. Its lack of any progress in that direction is due, not to any lack of determination on its part, but to the strength and deep determination of the membership of the American trade union movement." 

A competing resolution urging U.S. recognition of the Russian government was not brought to a vote.

"Putting on the Lid" by Fred Seibel in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Oct. 20, 1926

A similar resolution against the fascist regime in Italy received less attention from American editorial cartoonists. It read in part, "In fascism we find only another form of dictatorship and autocracy, a principle of government that can never find anything but opposition in the minds of free people."

"The Big Parade" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ca. Oct. 11, 1926

A more controversial stand taken at the AFL convention was advocating for a five-day work week. At the time, most workers were expected to be on the job six, even seven days a week, for ten or more hours each day. Workers rights organizations had been calling for shorter hours for years; AFL President William Green noted that the five-day work week had already been adopted in some branches of the printing and building trades, and during the summer in some department stores.

The most prominent convert to the five-day work week in 1926 was a big name in the automotive industry.

"Can He Make the Grade" by Dean O'Dell in Dayton Daily News, Oct. 9, 1925

Henry Ford instituted the five-day, 40-hour work week at his automobile plant on May 1, 1926, believing that it would benefit both the company and its workforce — and not incidentally, dampen any enthusiasm among employees for joining a union. His public explanation was that “Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation.”

"The New Commandment" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 6, 1926

"Ding" Darling cited the biblical command to labor six days out of every seven. I would note that by phrasing its caption as a question and drawing a car in danger of overheating, Dean O'Dell's cartoon casts a shade of doubt upon the success of Ford's five-day work week.

"Out of Order" by Jesse Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. Oct. 13, 1926

A feature story by L.L. Stevenson for Detroit News marking the 80th birthday of Elbert "Judge" Gary, Chairman of United States Steel, summed up his opinion on the five-day workweek and other labor issues:

For the steel industry, he holds that such a week would be utterly impractical since so many of the operations are continuous. He does not think much of the proposal to unionize the automotive industry. Labor unions when they attempt to dictate when and where a man shall work are in the wrong. English labor unions have become too radical.  Prohibition has increased the efficiency of the American workingman.

"I don't absolve the bad features," he continued. "You must average up things. On the whole, the workingman is better off. If I had been writing the law, I would have excluded beer and light wines, though in my opinion, neither benefits the workingman in any way."

And yet, the five-day work week soon became the norm in much of the industrialized world. For younger generations, it was all they knew since childhood.

"A Popular Movement" by Harold Talburt for United Feature Syndicate, ca. Oct. 9, 1926

Q Toon: Tuberville at 20,000 Feet

I loathe headlines that give away the punch line, but I wonder how many people half my age would catch the reference in the first place.

Ah, well. If you didn't catch the reference in the headline, you didn't catch the reference in the cartoon, either. Ask a Boomer.

And if you didn’t get the reference to Senator Tommy Bubbaville (R-AL) and his goofy speech decrying the Federal Aviation Administration’s lax attitude toward furry airline employees, well, what are you doing here? 

I mean, it was in all the topical late-night shows and cable news programs desperate for a break from war, inflation, and a reckless regime running roughshod over democracy. There's an election coming up, and it's high time to do your homework for it.

When this idea first came to me, I didn’t remember that the gremlin on the wing of William Shatner’s airplane was itself quite furry. Somehow, I had something more Salt Vampire-like in my memory. Checking images from the original Twilight Zone episode meant having to tweak the dialogue slightly; I think it still works, though.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I was almost completely finished touching up this cartoon in PhotoShop when I realized that this fellow had no hands.

It might be reasonable for one of his hands to be hidden, but not both (unless he was sitting on them), so I tried adding his right hand in PhotoShop. Not having broken down to buy something with a drawing stylus, that meant trying to draw a hand with a mouse.

Which is like trying to tie a necktie while wearing catcher's mitts.

I'm afraid that the result is even worse than the hand-drawn hand partly showing in this week's sneak peek. And that's why I didn't try adding in this guy's left hand.