Your Teeming Masses

Since the Corrupt Trump Administration is now bowdlerizing Emma Lazarus and criminalizing legal immigrants, Stigmaback Saturday takes a wide-ranging look back at the United States's anti-immigrant hypocrisy.

I just bought myself the fifth volume of the comprehensive collection of daily and Sunday "Pogo" comic strips by Walt Kelly. The foreword by Jake Tapper includes this non-Pogo strip Kelly drew in response to the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.

Cartoon by Walt Kelly (in New York Star?), ca. June, 1948

Refugees admitted to the United States under this program were also aided by voluntary social service agencies, accredited by the Displaced Person Commission. Most of these agencies were created by religious and ethnic groups, who gave assurances that the admitted refugees would not become “public charges” and that they, the agencies, would help oversee the resettlement of the refugees.

In spite of being a nation of immigrants, the U.S. has a long history of citizens convinced that immigration got out of hand once grandpa and grandma had stepped off the boat.

I don't have a cartoonist, publication, or date for this cartoon (credit Culver Pictures), but it probably dates from the fin de siècle, and quite possibly Judge magazine.

"Where Is the Blame" by Grant Hamilton in Judge, ca. 1891

The cartoonists at Judge appear to have a long-standing animus against immigrants. The protagonist in Judge Art Editor Grant Hamilton's 1891 cartoon points at a horde of ne'er-do-wells labeled "German socialist," "Russian anarchist," "Polish vagabond," "Italian brigand," "English convict," and "Irish pauper,"  and tells Uncle Sam, "If Immigration was properly Restricted you would no longer be troubled with Anarchy, Socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!"

"The Unrestricted Dumping Ground" by Louis Dalrymple in Judge, ca. 1901 or '02

Another Judge cartoonist, Louis Dalrymple, portrays immigrants "direct from the slums of Europe" swarming ashore as so many rats. Italians figure rather prominently in this cartoon; so too does anarchist Leon Czolgosz, represented by the rat with the red bandanna and a dagger labeled "assassination" in its teeth. Looking through the clouds is the president he assassinated, William McKinley. (The real Czolgosz used a gun, but I guess the Socialist rat swiped it from him in this cartoon. To each according to his needs.)

"The High Tide of Immigration" by Louis Dalrymple in Judge, 1903

Dalrymple returned to a maritime metaphor in 1903, widening his paranoia to a more inclusive array of national stereotypes. Now, I'm not saying his anti-immigrant preoccupation was itself a manifestation of mental disease or defect, but as it happens, Dalrymple died of paralytic dementia just two years later, aged 44. Let that be a warning to Stephen Miller.

"Put Them Out and Keep Them Out" by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, June, 1919

Since this here blog has a thing about keeping track of what cartoonists were drawing 100 years ago, let's now skip ahead to 1919. A series of terrorist attacks by communist sympathizers began with several explosive devices mailed to prominent Americans, including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and billionaire John D. Rockefeller, intended to be delivered on May Day. A few arrived early and others were not delivered due to insufficient postage. One delivered to a senator from Georgia did explode, injuring his wife; another delivered to the mayor of Seattle was a dud. The rest were intercepted before anyone was hurt.

"An Ounce of Mosquito Netting..." by J. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, June 6, 1919

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Bombers delivered explosive devices themselves in eight U.S. cities shortly after midnight on June 2, including at the homes of Attorney General Palmer, of judges in New York City, Pittsburgh and Boston, of a Massachusetts congressman, and of the mayor of Cleveland. The Church of Our Lady of Victory in Philadelphia was another target. Two were killed in the New York bombing, one of them reportedly the bomber himself.

"Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 8, 1919

Residual panic over bombings of military and port facilities by German sympathizers during the war easily shifted to red hysteria, especially since communism was associated not only with Russians, but with Germans — especially German-American academics and socialists in elected office.

"The Hook" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Association, June, 1919

Many cartoonists were able to express their condemnation of the bombers without painting immigrants with the same brush, pen or charcoal. But for many Americans, it was taken for granted that immigrants were behind the violence and that sending them back to Europe was the obvious solution — a sentiment the Ku Klux Klan would be able to exploit in the decade to come.

"There Is Some Carpenter Work for Us to Do" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, June, 1919

But let us step back another 50 years to close with a more hopeful "Can't we all just get along?" sentiment, from German-American immigrant Thomas Nast.

"Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, November 20, 1869

Why, he even allowed the Irish guy a seat at the table!

Comic Caper, Part Dos

Stripback Saturday returns to an old comic strip I drew about a murder mystery in the funny pages. I drew The Funny Paper Caper over the course of the 1983-84 school year for the UW-Parkside Ranger (that's four years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit... but I'm not actively considering suing Disney Corporation at this point in time).

When we left our story, our police lieutenant narrator had begun his investigation of the murder of Rufus T. Pornapple. Having just talked to Mrs. Pornapple, who thought he had arrived to take report of a burglary at their home, our intrepid detective is about to meet the neighbors.

In addition to the occasional picture on the wall of some bit of cartoon history, I mimicked the balloons and printing of the cartoon characters. I somehow failed to incorporate a gargantuan sandwich or a bathtub into this part of the story line, however.

I'm going to need to explain here the inside joke that Strollin Bowlin' was a mascot who appeared in UW-P Ranger advertisements for the campus bowling alley.

Mimicking their cartoonists' lettering, it was so much easier to cram a lot of dialogue into Kathy's balloons than Mr. Dumpstead's.

✒

How the Stephen Millers of the 19th Century Regarded Your Forebears

If I hadn't set the ball rolling on this Comic Caper nostalgia last week, I should probably have taken Trump's announcement of his No-Wretched-Refuse-Allowed immigration bill to present a more scholarly look back at 19th-Century editorial cartoons that warned against allowing your immigrant ancestors into the United States.

It's been done before, however. Here's an example that takes on almost every immigrant nationality, anyway (plus First Nations) (and even Canadians); and consider this your trigger warning that it's rather offensive.

"Please, Ma'am, May We Come In?" by Grant E. Hamilton in  Judge, 1893.

Q Toon: Welcome Flaggin'

Until the Bidens move out of #1 Observatory Circle, Mike and Karen Pence are renting a home in Chevy Chase. A half dozen or so of the Vice President-elect's new, temporary neighbors there are flying rainbow flags in protest of his signing of Indiana's "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" blessing discrimination against LGBT citizens as long as there's a faith-based excuse for it. His record also includes support of "conversion therapy" and opposition to just about every LGBT civil rights measure, from marriage equality to respecting gender identity to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

The flags are “a respectful message showing, in my case, my disagreement with some of [Pence's] thinking,” neighbor Ilse Heintzen told the Washington D.C. ABC affiliate. “I have no idea what he will think about, but I hope he will change his mind.”

Q Toon: Broadway Has Its Eyes On You

This kerfuffle over the cast of Hamilton addressing Vice President-elect Mike Pence in their audience over the weekend has served to distract national attention from a number of important stories about the incoming administration. Sure, some media reported that Donald Berzilius Trump settled the lawsuit over his Trump University Scam for $25 million; and the appointment of a racist Attorney General and a fascist Chief of Staff. But since a growing percentage of Americans get their news from late-night comedians, there is a danger of those of us in the Humor Biz aiding and abetting Trump's efforts to redirect the nation's attention toward issues of his choosing.

The curtain call speech was pretty mild stuff, especially if you compare it to the organized shout-downs of any attempt to discuss the Affordable Care Act in 2009. You'd never know it from the howls of indignation from the Tweeter-in-Chief, however.

What Brandon Victor Dixon (Vice President Aaron Burr in the play) actually said was:

“You know, we have a guest in the audience this evening — Vice President-elect Pence, I see you walking out but I hope you hear just a few more moments. Sir, we hope that you will hear us out.
“We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us — our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

To Trump's base, this was one more case of librul ayleets lookin' down there nozes at Middla Murkan Valews — because that's a one-way speedway, ain't it? — so Trump is delighted to divert their righteous indignation in the direction of the Great White Way.

So where do I get off calling Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the IIIrd a racist, antigay bigot?

• Testifying before the Senate as it considered Sessions's 1986 nomination for a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Figures testified that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot." Sessions passed the comment off as a joke.
• Concerning another allegation, Sessions testified, "I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist, but I meant no harm by it."
• As Attorney General of Alabama, Sessions worked to deny funding to student Gay-Straight Alliances at The University of Alabama, Auburn University and The University of South Alabama, stating "an organization that professes to be comprised of homosexuals and/or lesbians may not receive state funding or use state-supported facilities to foster or promote those illegal, sexually deviate activities defined in the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws."
• He is on the record against hate crime protections, marriage equality, and open military service by LGBT persons, calling gay rights "a threat to Western Civilization."

Well, I could be wrong about him.

He could, perhaps, be a complete misanthrope. My first cartoon about him, was back in 2009. A Filipino woman was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the "Uniting American Families Act," which would have granted the partners of same-sex binational couples the same protections different-sex couples have, when her 12-year-old son started crying over the prospect of one of his mothers being deported. Sessions reportedly muttered to his aides, "Enough with the histrionics!"