Happy Dyscentennial, Everybody

"Centennial Mirror" by American Oleograph Co., 1876. From Library of Congress 

I don't have a cartoon for the U.S. semicentennial in 1826, which the nation celebrated by killing off John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, so let's start our Graphical History Tour of Multimodiennial July Fourths with this political cartoon from the centennial year of 1876.

"Donkeys at the Centennial" by Frank Bellew in Harper's Weekly, New York, July 1, 1876

There must have been more celebratory cartoons about the U.S. turning 100, but Harper's Weekly's sole contribution that week was all about Democrats criticizing, I believe, the Centennial International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine. President Ulysses S. Grant opened the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia on May 10, 1876, where it ran for the next six months.

U.S. exhibits included entries from 21 states on all topics covered by its official name, as well as on Native American heritage and the rights (such as they were) of women and the abolition of slavery. That last exhibit must have rankled southern Democrats and their sympathizers in the North.

If that wasn't the inspiration for Frank Bellew's cartoon, perhaps it had to do with Edward Mitchell Bannister's painting Under the Oaks, which was awarded first prize at the Exhibition until he arrived to accept the honor and the judges discovered that Bannister was Black. Only vehement protest by Bannister's fellow artists kept the judges from revoking their decision.

"The Centennial Transfer" in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, New York, May 17, 1876

This cartoon from a critic of Grant's Republican administration probably took some of its inspiration from scandals in the Interior and War Departments exposed by investigations conducted by the Democratic majority in the House. 

General Joseph R. Hawley, a Republican politician from Connecticut, was president of the United States Centennial Commission. John Welsh was the president of the Centennial Board of Finance. In the cartoon, Welsh and Hawley present President Grant with the Centennial Exhibition building, and the insinuation is that Grant was not in control of graft and fraud in his cabinet.

The cartoon bore no signature, so I can't be certain whether it was the work of  Matt Morgan, Joseph Keppler, or some other Leslie's cartoonist.

1926

"Onward the Nation Goes Conquering the Heights" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 1926

A while back, our Graphical History Tour observed the rise and fall of Miss Columbia as a symbol of the United States. She was still around to celebrate the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926, at least on the drawing boards of cartoonists old enough to remember the centennial.

As in 1876, the nation's premier party was in Philadelphia, hosting a World's Fair from May 31 to November 30. Controversy — including lawsuits and fines levied against workers — arose from having the fair open on July 4, because it was a Sunday: Sabbath laws forbade non-essential business from operating on the Lord's Day.

The Sesquicentennial International Exposition opened anyway.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted "That the sesquicentennial of our independence should fall on a Sunday adds to the impressiveness of the anniversary. This holiday will doubtless be not only safe and sane, but more than usually solemn. A degree of solemnity will not be out of place... "

"The Forty-Eight Stars of Liberty" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, July 4, 1926

John Adams had written that Independence Day (by which he meant July 2) should be commemorated "by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty..."

"Ding" Darling, however, who was born in 1876, predicted that not everybody would appreciate a degree of solemnity just because the Fourth fell on the Lord's Day in his fiftieth year.

"Celebrating the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 4, 1926

Of course, John Adams also called for "pomp and parades, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from time forward forevermore."

Boys — and occasionally men — celebrating life, liberty, and the pursuit of bodily injury with  firecrackers was a longstanding staple of Independence Day editorial cartoons. So we'll let Mr. Darling's entry stand for all the other cherry bomb toons for this particular year.

"Quite a Husky Kid for His Age" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 3, 1926

The United States often thought of itself, and been regarded by the major European powers, as a youngster among nations. By 1926, however, there were younger eastern European and near Asian countries that emerged from the rubble of World War I. 

One could interpret Dorman Smith's cartoon to suggest that the U.S. was starting to get too big for its britches; maybe he was hinting that it was time for the kid to graduate into some big boy pants.

"There's a Tie That Binds Us Still" by J.P. Alley in Commercial Appeal, Memphis, July 4, 1926

If Dorman Smith had Mother Earth happy for America's birthday, J.P. Alley focuses on one foreign nation, citing the improvement in American relations with our erstwhile colonial master since our break-up. 

Editorial cartoonists being a rather cantankerous sort, there were some political jabs on certain editorial pages that July 4.

Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 4, 1926

Okay, just one more cartoon of things going bang bang. Nelson Harding brings up congressional hearings on the millions of dollars being poured into primary election races for statehouse and the U.S. Senate that spring. 

The other night, I heard Ali Velshi state that the fight to control campaign spending has been going on for half a century. This cartoon demonstrates that the fight has been going on at least twice as long.

"Re-Declaring Our Independence" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1926

Oscar Chopin used the holiday to reiterate his faith in isolationism, shared by many Republicans and the Hearst newspapers for which he drew.

This cartoon looks an awful lot like the template used for a cartoon of his we visited four years ago.

"The Sesqui Centennial in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily Worker, Chicago, July 3, 1926

Communist labor cartoonist Hay Bales offered this sour history of the United States for the nation's sesquicentennial.

In his telling, the North won the Civil War because of its advantage in industrial and financial capital, resulting in a centralized federal government. He termed the Spanish-American War "the first military move of the U.S. in the field of imperialist conquest" (Mexico and Native American nations might beg to differ); he attributed U.S. entry into World War I to the same motivation.

1976

by Ranan Lurie for Los Angeles Times, ca. July 3, 1976

Jumping ahead another fifty years, Miss Columbia had been replaced on American drawing boards by the Statue of Liberty (a trend already begun by 1926).

by Tony Auth in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4, 1976

The U.S. Bicentennial was greeted with an explosion of clip art, per Tony Auth and Frank Interlandi.

"Happy Birthday, America" by Frank Interlandi in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

As well as explosions of the pyrotechnical ooh and ahh variety.

"I Hope They Know How Lucky They Are" by Douglas Borgstedt for Copley News Service, July 4, 1976

Douglas Borgstedt used the holiday to highlight the difference in liberty in the United States and in the Eastern Bloc nations controlled by Moscow.

by Dwayne Powell in Raleigh Times & Observer, July 4, 1976

May I say that it's nice to see that, with all these cartoons starring George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Miss Columbia, Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, and the Bald Eagle, someone finally remembered to give Thomas Jefferson some credit for the Declaration of Independence.

Incidentally, you may have noticed the absence from these cartoons from 1926 and 1976 of the president in office at the time. Hay Bales included Woodrow Wilson in his sesquicentennial cartoon, but the man had been dead for two years, and was no hero of the radical movement besides. 

But while Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin Coolidge, and Gerald Ford certainly participated in special Independence Day celebrations, they in no way turned them into spectacles of personal self-aggrandizement.

Those of us who experienced the Bicentennial have regrets that the spirit of coming together in celebration then is not what we are witnessing now. To a certain extent, that's because we were young then and now we're not. A recent Christian Science Monitor column, "Can a Divided U.S. Celebrate Its 250th Together?" tried to sum up the tenor of the time:

Back then, the nation also felt fractious, stressed, and war-weary, says Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.” Crime was up. Energy prices were high. New York City, the flotilla’s host, had become a byword for urban dysfunction and debt. Some questioned whether it was even safe for Operation Sail.

President Gerald Ford, who had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, was among those who “hoped to use the bicentennial to ‘turn the page’ and ‘begin a new chapter’ with a patriotic and unifying celebration,” says Professor Stein via email. They largely succeeded, and many still remember the parties and parades held across the country.

"When in the Course of Current Events" by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

Let's not pretend, however, that the Bicentennial occurred during an unadulterated Era of Good Feeling. If there were editorial cartoons to spoil the party in 1926, there were a few of the same in 1976. Paul Conrad pointed out that there were still Americans seeking a "more perfect union": immigrant workers, laborers, women, Blacks, and Native Americans.

"Birthday Hangover" by Frank in Pittsburgh Courier, July 10, 1976

This cartoonist enumerated a number of Black Americans' complaints in the aftermath of the Bicentennial, including our since forgotten backing of an anticommunist militia battling for control of Angola after its independence from Portugal in 1975, and governmental tolerance of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Conservatives found reason to grouse, too:

Eugene Payne on WSOC-TV, Charlotte NC, ca. July, 1976

I'm guessing that Eugene Payne's cartoon was in color on TV, but unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of it.

Jerry Falwell had not yet founded his Moral Majority political action machine, but a backlash was growing against the trend toward permissiveness, civil liberties, and pluralism of the previous decade. In a few years, it would gel into a partisan force empowering the Republican Party, even after its preachers were exposed as hypocrites for their enthusiastic support of the present completely amoral GOP standard bearer.

But that's a topic for...

2026

"American Colosseum" by Howard McWilliam in The Week, June 12, 2026

I won't be surprised to see a few celebratory editorial cartoons show up today, but I think the sub-head on this recent cover of The Week accurately sums up how most of us feel about the nation's semiquincentennial. Joel Pett had a cartoon this week that expresses my sentiments perfectly.

It's not just us woke liberal dummocrats, either; The Week's June 12 edition paraphrases some conservatives' opinions:

"America's 250th birthday party 'won't be much of a celebration at all.'" ― Jeffrey Blehar, National Review

"Gladiatorial combat is just one way Trump has turned our national birthday into 'a royalist celebration of himself.'... Trump has 'made a pitiful shambles of what should have been a glorious moment.'" ― David Frum, The Atlantic

"Rather than be demoralized by Trump's effort to hijack our holiday, we can view this July 4 as an opportunity for a renewed dedication to the real meaning of Independence Day. We can look away from Trump's sad simulacrum of kingly spectacles in Washington, D.C." ―William Kristol, The Bulwark

2076

To those of you who will be around to celebrate the Tricentennial: first of all, I hope that there is one. I hope that it finds you during more harmonious times.

Mind you, "more harmonious," like "a more perfect union," is in the eye of the beholder.

Q Toon: When They Go Low

Some weeks, there seems to be a dearth of topics for LGBTQ+ cartoons.

This was not one of those weeks.

Some anonymous caller to Michigan Child Protective Services made a false complaint against Pete Buttigieg. An openly gay candidate for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat was forcibly shooed away from a transgender pride event in San Francisco by pro-Palestinian activists making wildly unfair accusations against him because he's Jewish. Also in San Francisco, four pitchers on the local baseball team thought the Giants' LGBTQ Pride Game would be a good idea to tell LGBTQ fans just what they thought of them. And it would have been a good time to draw anything about the U.S. semiquincentennial.

I went with the first story, in part because Michigan's Between the Lines is one of my client papers, but also because the story is truly outrageous.

Buttigieg described in his Substack the attack on his family, likening it to "SWATting":

Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

I showed them in, invited them on the deck so that we could hear each other over the barking dog, and asked what was going on. They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.

I was bewildered and troubled, but tried to stay calm. I’m used to any number of falsehoods, attacks, and serious problems being thrown my way. What I didn’t understand was what could have led to this kind of visit. Then, the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day. They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night. [...]

An anonymous caller had contacted CPS. The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.

That was all. The officer had a couple of obvious questions. He asked if I had been to the town where the woman claimed she had met me. I have not. Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor. Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.

Buttigieg holds open the possibility that he and his husband will pursue civil damages against the anonymous allegator. Michigan could also file criminal charges against the man for false reporting. That presumes that the person's cloak of anonymity can be drawn back in the first place. Unmasking the Mystery Woman from Alabama may well be impossible, if she exists at all.

There isn't much else that can be done about this sort of attack by false police report. Child Protective Services must take such allegations seriously, even against public figures. Sometimes the allegations turn out to be true — often when the public figure is some stridently antigay Republican preacher type.

If this kind of attack becomes more common — and make no mistake: LGBTQ parents are not the only people susceptible to this — somebody is going to have to give it a name.

But for now, Bearing False Witness will have to do.

These Weeds' Sneak Peek

Our profession lost one of its princes this week. Paul Fell drew editorial cartoons for the Lincoln [Nebraska] Journal for 23 years, until his editors learned that he had donated to the political campaign of a friend. The crisp, clean, whimsical style of his drawing often belied a strong bite behind whatever point he was making that day. Catch his oeuvre here.

He made me feel welcome and one of the club shortly after I arrived for my first American Association of Editorial Cartoonists convention, in 2015, and I'm seeing the same story from many other AAEC members.

Arlene and Paul Fell, with Steve Greenberg

P.S.: His family is keeping his Substack active, with plans to published some new works Paul left behind.

The Recycling Bin of History

Every once in a while, I come across editorial cartoons for these Graphical History Tours that I like, but which don't make the cut for one reason or another.

Which is just to say that there ain't much by way of an overall theme to today's post. And here we go!

"The Grist of War" by Winsor McCay in New York Herald, ca. June 18, 1926

I was all set to include this Winsor McCay cartoon in a recent post about Abd El-Krim's surrender to  colonial French and Spain troops in Morocco, but something just seemed off about it.

Given the timing of its publication, it seems that the cartoon ought to be about the Rif War, but it's curious why the "Militarist" character is drawn with ridiculously exaggerated white lips, in the manner that White cartoonists and minstrel shows of the day portrayed Black people.

German cartoonists in the aftermath of World War I frequently drew African soldiers carrying out French military actions as a way of highlighting African soldiers' presence in France's occupation of the Ruhr region; the cartooning practice was meant to inflame German resentment at being policed by untermenschen.

Was McCay echoing that same racist propaganda here? If so, the cartoon was more likely about French policy against Germany, not France's adventures in Morocco.

"Well, Anyway, a Good Time Was Had By All" by James North in Washington Post, June 4, 1926

Meanwhile, a much-ballyhooed disarmament conference was underway. The French poppinjay in the foreground of James North's cartoon is more representative of how U.S. cartoonists represented France: stiffly waxed goatee and upturned mustache.

"But Isn't It Kind of Dangerous" by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 1, 1926

Here’s a “Ding” Darling cartoon I liked about New York Governor Al Smith’s position on Prohibition. It didn’t quite fit in with my post on spring primary results — Smith was not in a reelection race — and I already had two other Darling cartoons having to do with Iowa’s GOP Senate primary.

I do like to keep an eye out for cartoons featuring the men who were destined to run for president and vice president later on. I shouldn’t need to warn of a spoiler alert when I explain that Smith would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, and it’s not as if the "Happy Warrior" were an obscure pol in 1926. Nor is he largely forgotten today.

Unlike his 1928 running mate.

By the way, I came across this campaign button at a resale store recently. I wonder whether whoever wrote the price sticker was unaware that Franklin Roosevelt was not at the top of the ticket, but was the vice presidential nominee in that 1920 campaign.

"Kompromissflaggen" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 6, 1926

This cartoon suggesting designs various German political parties and interests might have had for the Weimar Republic's flag didn't fit in with recent posts on European affairs. This is an unretouched image from the Heidelberg's on-line archive; besides adding English translations, I would have tried to eliminate the yellowing of the page and to emphasize the black lines.

Perhaps Herr Garvens would have appreciated my coloring in some red on his flags, too, assuming I would be coloring the correct rectangles. My guess is that the red isn't missing because it has faded over time, but rather that it was never there — because Kladderadatsch could only afford black and yellow ink for the cartoons on its inside pages that week.

Finally, it would have been timely, in this week when the Supreme Court floods the zone with a blizzard of rulings like a college student cranking out all his term papers at once, to have put together a post about historic Supreme Court decisions. Sadly, editorial cartoons about the Court are somewhat rare in the 1920's.

"Memories of Dred Scott" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1926

Cartoons about the Court do show up in newspapers appealing to a Black audience, however. This Wilbert Holloway cartoon concerns the Supreme Court's decision that it had no jurisdiction to rule in Curtis & Corrigan v. Buckley et al., a case contesting the legality of private contracts restricting the sale of homes to Black persons.

The case made by the bill is this: the parties are citizens of the United States, residing in the District [of Columbia]. The plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan are white persons, and the defendant Curtis is a person of the negro race. In 1921, thirty white persons, including the plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan, owning twenty-five parcels of land, improved by dwelling houses, situated on S Street, between 18th and New Hampshire Avenue, in the City of Washington, executed an indenture, duly recorded, in which they recited that, for their mutual benefit and the best interests of the neighborhood comprising these properties, they mutually covenanted and agreed that no part of these properties should ever be used or occupied by, or sold, leased or given to, any person of the negro race or blood, and that this covenant should run with the land and bind their respective heirs and assigns for twenty-one years from and after its date.

Justice Edward T. Sanford delivered the Court's decision that the 5th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution did not apply to private contracts. Sanford, a Harding appointee from Tennessee, was a friend and protegé of Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Like Taft a conservative jurist, his earlier majority opinion in Gitlow v. New York ironically established precedent for the liberal Warren Court's decisions expanding civil rights. 

Q Toon: Can You Take a Joke. Please

A witless baboon in the White House Octagon to celebrate Donald Commodius Trump's Octogenarian Birthday made a gratuitous swipe at former First Lady Michelle Obama, grabbing the mic to call her a man. 

I guess MAGArillas think that kind of thing is funny. At least until they start clinging to it as a core belief, like their tenacious insistence despite all evidence to the contrary that her husband was born in Kenya.

It's of the same joke book of pretending that James Talarico is a transgender vegan, or Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet.

To be fair, liberals do it, too. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house; J.D. Vance never wrote that he made passionate love to a sofa. And Donald Trump doesn't really have a pig snout. I do not, however, see liberals insisting that these things are, in fact, true.

Poking fun at politicians is fair game; questioning the gender identity of Mr. Talarico and Mrs. Obama, however, is intentionally mean. The present fascist regime is devoted to persecuting transgender and gender-non-conforming persons, so casting aspersions on someone's gender identity can hardly be innocent fun.

Of course, there are dimwitted, cranky trumpeters who imagine that coining the word Dumocrats or calling anyone who disagrees with him stupid is fiendishly clever, and any liberal who doesn't agree must not have a sense of humor.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water

Or, What's It All About, Algae?

This Week's Sneak Peek

 Listen, if you have to explain a joke...

...you might just be a cartoonist with a weblog.