This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon co-stars someone whom I haven't drawn in a while, and it's not this guy.

That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Moving on: I've edited a cartoon and blog post from a couple weeks ago to correct an error on my part. An editor questioned my syndicate editors about the name I mistakenly gave Nex Benedict, the Oklahoma teenager who died shortly after other students beat them up in a school lavatory. Somewhere in the process of erasing and rewriting text, I had changed Nex to Dex.

When the question was passed along to me, it came with the suggestion that perhaps I was trying to depict the cluelessness of the politicians talking in the cartoon, or their awkwardness in using Nex's pronouns of choice. 

At first, I thought the editors were confused by the use of they/them pronouns referring to Nex where someone could think the pronouns referred back to "those students." Most of my erasing and rewriting of dialogue had been in effort to steer clear of they/them confusion.

After a few email exchanges, I realized where I had been in error, so I corrected the cartoon and sent replacement files to Q Syndicate in case any client papers are still interested in it now that an official cause of death has been declared.

I apologize to all concerned for my mistake. 

Q Toon: A Death in Oklahoma

Note: This cartoon and commentary have been edited to correct the name of the deceased.

No, I am finally offering my say on the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old student in Owasso, Oklahoma who identified as non-binary and died on February 8, a day after being beaten by other students in the girls' bathroom at their school.

Authorities are being somewhat cagey in addressing the cause of Nex's death; they had been released from the hospital after being taken there after the attack. Final autopsy and toxicology reports remain pending as of this writing. The Office for Civil Rights division of the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation this month into the Oklahoma school district following a complaint filed by the Human Rights Campaign.

Nex's family says that Nex had been bullied at school for a over a year. When they reported this assault to the police, the officer asked why they had not reported the bullying to the school, and Nex replied "I didn't really see the point in it."

My cartoon this week leads off with Oklahoma's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, who expressed his empty sympathy for Nex's family, but who, along with the state's other elected leaders, shares responsibility for the conditions that led up to this tragedy.

"Oklahoma lawmakers have put restrictions on gender-affirming care and barred transgender students from using school bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Walters recently hired a rabidly anti-trans out-of-state social media figure to serve on the state’s Library Media Advisory Committee, a grotesque political stunt and a blaring insult to every LGBTQ+ person in the state."

That out-of-state social media figure is Chaya Raichik, a hate-monger in charge of the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ "Libs of TikTok." Last year, a post by Raichik compelled an Owasso High School teacher whom Nex "greatly admired" to resign.

No wonder Nex saw "no point" in reporting bullying to the remaining staff at the school.

At a legislators' forum with the Tahlequah Area Chamber of Commerce on February 22, State Senator Tom Woods, Republican, said that while "his heart goes out" regarding the teen's death, "We are a conservative state —  supermajority — in the House and Senate. I represent a constituency that doesn't want that filth in Oklahoma."

Woods's statement reportedly met with applause.

The Trevor Project conducted a national survey of LGBTQ+ youth in 2022 regarding their mental health, breaking down the results by state. Here are some of the responses from Oklahoma:

The Trevor Project

Oklahoma can and ought to do better by these kids.

But naah. They're "a conservative state." So they won't.

All This And the Isle of Yap

Fasten your seat belts: today's Graphical History Tour is going to lurch from one theme to another like a Prokofiev symphony.

"And If You Don't Like It You're a Red" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oklahoma City OK, March 14, 1923

This is a local-issue cartoon, but it will do nicely to kick off today's piece.

We last saw the work of this fellow Butler during Oklahoma's 1923 recall election that removed Governor Jack Walton from office — and I thought that perhaps Butler had laid down his pen after the recall was successful.

But here he is again, portraying a statehouse infested with, right-to-left, Cement Trust, Attorney General [George Short], Standard Oil, Reliance Shirt Factory, KKK, Bank Vampire, School Land Leech, Kept Press, Insurance Graft, School Book Trust, Bribery, [President of the State Board of Agriculture John] Whitehurst, Jack Walton, Corruption, and Loot.

The shirt factory had won a state penitentiary contract, slammed by the Leader as illegal. The Oklahoma House voted in February to impeach John Whitehurst, accusing him of corruption and neglect of duty, but fell short in a vote to impeach the State Attorney General. The Leader favored the Farmer-Labor Party, which was denounced by the state's mainstream media as "red."

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Since we're all hot and bothered about immigration today, here's where we were 100 years ago:

"Give Me More of Northern Europe" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Feb. 28, 1924

I regret that I wasn't able to put together a Graphical History Tour with a Black American History Month theme in February, even though half of last week's oeuvre was devoted to doings of the Ku Klux Klan.

There was an plenty of bigotry to spare in this country in 1924, as evidenced by this William Morris cartoon. Mr. Melting Pot supposedly can't digest Catholic Italians and swarthy Slavs, who were on the same side as the U.S. side during World War I; apparently Morris had gotten over any lingering distaste for Germans by this time.

I'm just surprised he didn't figure out how to add Jews to his personae non gratae.

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The Daily Cartoonist featured a post about turn-of-the-century editorial cartoonist Frederick Opper last week, so here's his take on the Teapot Dome Scandal:

"The Dough-heny Minstrels" by Frederick Opper for International Feature Service ca. March 7, 1924

Opper's modus operandi was to cram as many little ideas into a cartoon as he had room for, and to repeat them as necessary or convenient. For instance, the Island of Yap had absolutely nothing to do with the Teapot Dome scandal. The tiny Pacific island and telegraph communications hub had been a German territory claimed by Japan after World War I, a claim contested by the U.S. Opper devoted a long series of post-war cartoons to Island of Yap doggerel because he thought its name was funny.

The title of his "The Dough-heny Minstrels" series was a play on the name of oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company (today's Pemex). Doheny had secured a deal with then Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall (the goat atop the mountain in the cartoon) to lease the naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, and was a financial backer of Democratic contender William McAdoo (fishing in the boat). The other seated figure, Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, had won the Teapot Dome lease.

By this time, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby had resigned from President Coolidge's cabinet, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty would be out of office by the end of the month.

George Creel, depicted by Opper in a gratuitously racist caricature, was actually a white man, a journalist with Colliers who had been Woodrow Wilson's head of the wartime Committee on Public Information. I don't know what exactly made Creel relevant to Opper's Dough-heny Minstrel series, in which he appeared repeatedly. What I find is that Creel wrote in February in defense of selling arms to Mexican President Obregon, and the editorial board at Colliers regarded the Teapot Dome scandal as something not worth Congress's time or their own pages.

Perhaps Opper thought Creel’s name was funny.

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"Fertile Soil" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1924

Speaking of Teapot Dome, third-party interests saw in it an opportunity for the Progressive presidential candidacy of Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin. The Oklahoma Leader, for one, touted Fighting Bob on its front page. Col. McCormick's Chicago Tribune, with this front page cartoon, clearly felt differently.

LaFollette had been in charge of an early investigation into the scandal, his belief in Secretary Fall's innocence shaken after finding his Senate office ransacked. The investigation was turned over to Democrat Thomas Walsh of Montana, the Senate's most junior member, eventually turning up Doheny's $100,000 loan to Fall.

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Incidentally, someone commenting on D.D. Degg's post about Frederick Opper asked whether Opper had included Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt in any of his editorial cartoons during the 1920 election. 

I have not come across any; by and large, veep candidates didn't attract much attention from editorial cartoonists that year. Indeed, Claude Bowman's several cartoons in 1900 that included Teddy Roosevelt and/or Adlai Stevenson Sr. stand out as the few examples I can think of when a cartoonist paid any attention to the running mates in that era.

Instead, I can offer this cartoon featuring FDR's future running mate, Texas Senator John Nance Garner.

"I Hope the President Isn't Playing Politics" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 13, 1924

Taxes, by the way, were due on March 15 in those days. Congress did not pass the tax cut bill in time.

The Walton Impeachment's Klimactic KlonKlusion

"Around and Around" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Oct. 17, 1923

Today's Graphical History Tour makes one last stop at the impeachment of Oklahoma Governor Jack C. Walton in 1923.

"That Creepy Feeling" by W.K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 31, 1923

As you of course recall, progressive Democrat Walton was elected Oklahoma's fifth Governor by a plurality in 1922, a year and a half after the Tulsa massacre, and soon began working to wrest local government and law enforcement from the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan. In September of 1923, he declared martial law in Tulsa and Okmulgee Counties, censoring the press, suspending habeas corpus, and authorizing a military tribunal to investigate and prosecute assaults and intimidation of citizens the Klan deemed less than "100% American."

This upset members of the Oklahoma legislature, some of whom were themselves members of the Klan; and on October 23, the Oklahoma House voted to impeach the Governor.

"When Night-hood Was in Flower" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oklahoma City, Oct. 19, 1923

As I have noted before, it's a shame that Oklahoma's newspapers had no local editorial cartoonists in their regular employ, relying instead on syndicated cartoons from out-of-state. Some of those cartoonists supported Walton at first, but by the time he was impeached, nearly all agreed that he had overreached his authority. Several national editorial cartoonists ignored Oklahoma politics entirely, which probably suited Walton's censors just fine.

So one ends up with trifles such as Butler's "When Night-hood Was in Flower" series in the leftist Oklahoma Leader— a series which disappeared from that weekly newspaper after the issue carrying the above cartoon.

Ad in Jack Walton's Paper, Oklahoma City, Nov. 1, 1923

Responding to his impeachment, Walton and his allies published a newspaper of their own: a four-page broadsheet filled with bold, lurid headlines over accounts of Klan atrocities. This advertisement for a book appeared in some editions of the short-lived Jack Walton's Paper.

The cartoon Klansmen on Walton's book cover (assuming that this is an accurate depiction of it) certainly appears to have been inspired by a "Ding" Darling cartoon.

"Making the Citizens of Oklahoma Over Into 100% Americans" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1923

The beaten woman in the ad also reminds me of another cartoon, but I have not been able to place it. Louis Raemaekers, perhaps?

Back at the impeachment proceedings, Gov. Walton demanded that his accusers in the legislature confess whether they were Klan members or not; but he was ruled out of order. Walton eventually stormed out of the Senate chambers, complaining that the trial was unfair.

"Well, Walton Is Out" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 26, 1923

On November 19, 1923, Walton was convicted on eleven of the House's 22 charges against him, and removed from office. Lieutenant Governor Martin Trapp, a conservative Democrat serving in that office under Walton and two previous governors, succeeded Walton as Governor for the remainder of his term. (State law limiting governors to a single term prohibited Trapp from running for a term of his own.)

Daniel Fitzpatrick may well have been the last editorial cartoonist paying any attention to Oklahoma politics. His cartoon notes the ouster of Governor Walton without approval or condemnation; but with a great deal of contempt for Oklahomans in general. Right down to their dogs.

There were plenty of issues with the Klan elsewhere, of course.

"The Sinister Hand" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 8, 1923

On the same Memphis Commercial Appeal front page with this Alley cartoon about the Atlanta Grand Wizard's potential for influence in Memphis government were two unrelated reports about Klansmen on trial — in Houston, Texas, and Balstrup, Louisiana — and two more about warrants issued against Klan officials in Birmingham, Alabama, and the case in Atlanta of a Klan spokesman arrested for the murder of an attorney working for deposed Klan Wizard William Simmons.

"Is the Ku Klux Question Solving Itself" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 19, 1923

Alley's cartoon appeared on the Commercial Appeal's front page on the date of municipal elections in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal supported the reelection of the incumbent mayor, Rowlett Payne, over two rivals, one of whom was allied with the Klan. As an Commercial Appeal editorial put it, challenger Joe Wood's ticket "runs on an issue imported from Atlanta, the leaders thereof now being engaged in a bloody feud among themselves."

"Poison" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Oct. 18, 1923

Payne would win reelection, with Wood coming in second.

I checked, and found that the doings of the Klan never piqued the interest of Atlanta Journal editorial cartoonist A.W. Brewerton at any point that November. Here's his cartoon on the same day (a Thursday) as Alley's "Halt, Memphis" cartoon above.

"Here and There in the News" by Alfred W. Brewerton in Atlanta Journal, Nov. 8, 1923

At the same time that the intra-Klan murder in Atlanta gave some like William Morris hope that the Klan was in deKline, the Texas State Fair devoted an entire day to the hate group. Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans gave a keynote speech to a crowd numbering upward of 75,000 Dragons, Klaybees and Cyclopses, decked out in their finest gold, purple, and scarlet robes and "100% American" buttons at the fair.

Evans charged that Black Americans were infested with tuberculosis and venereal disease, that Jews were an "unblendable" element in American society, and that "Do you realize, my friends, that the illiteracy of Europe is practically confined to Catholic countries?"

"The Hooded Cobra" by Al Frueh in New York World, ca. Nov. 16, 1923

I wonder if Frueh didn't mean "Klobra."

The Invisible Empire Strikes Back

Our Graphical History Tour returns today to Oklahoma in 1923, when Progressive Democrat Governor John C. Walton resorted to martial law to combat the Ku Klux Klan.

"The Outcast" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune Oct. 3, 1923

When we left Oklahoma last month. Walton had put the military in charge of Tulsa and Okmulgee Counties to put an end to the Klan's reign of terror there. Walton then extended martial law to the rest of the state, censoring the press, and widening military authority to investigate and prosecute crimes of the Klan.

"The Zero Hour" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Oct. 2, 1023

Outraged by Walton's actions, the state legislature scheduled a popular referendum for Tuesday, October 2, asking voters to approve an amendment to the state constitution allowing the legislature to convene a special session — something up to then only the Governor could do — for the purpose of impeaching Walton.

"Which" by Loring in Daily Oklahoman, Oct. 2, 1923

In my post a fortnight ago, I commented that it's a shame there were no local editorial cartoonists in Oklahoma; but I have since found an apparently home-grown editorial cartoon. It ran on the front page of the Daily Oklahoman on election day, and appears to be the only Loring cartoon to appear in the Daily Oklahoman all October. (Their editorial page ran "Ding" Darling cartoons nearly every day.)

"When Night-hood Was in Flower" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oct. 5, 1923

The Farmer-Labor weekly Oklahoma Leader appears to have taken on a cartoonist named Butler for a series of front-page cartoons titled "When Night-hood Was In Flower." (The klansman's wife in the above cartoon is saying "—My very best sheet, too!")

"When Night-hood Was in Flower" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oct. 12, 1923

Butler's cartoons, at least those in October, were more focused on mocking the Klan than having anything at all to say about the governor or the legislature.

"Sitting on the Lid" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, October 2, 1923

Meanwhile: Walton threatened to send out 22,000 armed officers to prevent the election from being held, and there were brief confrontations in Tulsa the day before the election. Officials in Cimmaron, Bryan, and Harper Counties ignored the legislature's call to open polling places, voting was heavy, however, in Oklahoma's remaining 74 counties — in spite of heavy rains.

"I'm Still Governor" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, October 3, 1923

When the votes were counted, Walton lost decisively throughout the state, including in Red River Valley counties where he had found his strongest support in the previous year's election. The legislature proceeded to call its special session.

"The fight on the Invisible Empire has just started," Walton defiantly told reporters. "I am still Governor of Oklahoma." 

Walton then turned to the state Supreme Court, asking it to nullify the October 2 election on the grounds of being unconstitutional.

"It Doesn't Look So Bad Today" by Bill Sykes for Philadelphia Public Ledger, October (?), 1923

The Daily Oklahoman ran this cartoon on its front page on October 4; I don't have its original date of publication in Philadelphia, so there is a possibility that it predated the election. In that case, the caption may have been the creation of the Oklahoman's editors rather than the cartoonist.

This next Sykes cartoon was certainly drawn after the election results were known.

"Logical Results" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, by Oct. 11, 1923

If, other than the Louisville Courier-Journal's Grover Page, out-of-state cartoonists who had earlier praised Walton for standing up to the Klan were now silent, perhaps they saw his ends as admirable, but the means indefensible. Yet one could hardly criticize the governor without seeming to sympathize with the Klan, which was, of course, actively supporting impeachment proceedings. Editorial cartoons are not particularly well-suited to nuance.

The Klan's influence inside the Oklahoma legislature was a known fact. Some of the representatives in state government were not merely sympathetic to the Klan, but members of it. Oklahoma-based Harlow's Weekly editorialized on October 6: "[T]he responsibility of Klan members of the legislature to be certain that everything they do is absolutely justifiable by facts made clear to the people of the state and the rest of the nation, is multiplied many times. No impeachment of Governor Walton which is based merely upon the fact that he is attacking the Klan can be made to stand up in the public's mind."

"Job" by Dennis McCarthy in Fort Worth Record, Oct. 18, 1923

Interrupting Oklahoma's political upheaval, those heavy rains that dampened the October 2 election kept pounding the state over the next two weeks — unleashing a horrific flood on Oklahoma City in mid-October. Thousands were left homeless.

The Oklahoma House would, a week after the flooding, vote to impeach Governor Walton.

"All Set for the Big Show" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Oct. 14, 1923

This Week's Sneak Peek

I'm honored to be included in Mike Peterson's post at Daily Cartoonist today for my post this past Saturday about Governor Jack Walton declaring martial law in 1923 to combat the Klan.

I can suggest my post from the previous Saturday for some additional context, and this one about the Greenwood massacre for those who are interested. If you're searching for contemporary source material, there is plenty to choose from at the Oklahoma Historical Society; Harlow's Weekly is a convenient place to start.

Where the Klan Comes Sweepin' Down the Plain

Today's Saturday Graphical History Tour returns to 1923 Oklahoma. 

Just a year and a half after the Tulsa Massacre wiped out that city's thriving Black community, progressive Democrat Jack C. Walton was elected governor of the state (having won his party's nomination by a plurality at a time when that practically guaranteed a victory in November).

Walton had campaigned on opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. Within months of assuming office in 1923, he declared martial law in Tulsa and Okmulgee Counties, where the Klan had effectively taken over the government, law enforcement, courts, and schools.

"The Latest State Song" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 19, 1923

Heading the military court investigation into the Klan in Tulsa, Aldrich Blake reported dozens of cases of unchecked whippings, floggings, and beatings there: 

"No arrests had ever been made until the military court convened. Except in one or two instances were the police called and immediately returned to the station. No investigation has ever been made of any one of these and dozen of other cases now under investigation."

Cases of the Klan's reign of terror cited in Associated Press reports included: 

"A mother, roughly dealt with when a band of twenty men raided her home and beat her husband — a child born prematurely as the result; a member of a township school board abducted by floggers and coerced into voting for a school head whom he opposed; an elderly man lashed because he opposed the way the school was run; a man and woman taken out of their beds and taken to the whipping field where the strap was applied to both because the whippers charged that they had been selling beer — these are among the cases related by Blake from the testimony."

"Oklahoma Improves the Klan Regalia" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, August 25, 1923

Out-of-state media offered measured approval of this crackdown on Klan rule and the promise of prosecutions to come. New York World editorialized, "The choice in Oklahoma is unfortunately between a spectacular enforcement of the law and an acquiescence of mob rule — abdication, in effect, to the invisible empire. It is a choice of evils, but the first is bearable, the latter impossible."

"Impotent White Caps" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 17, 1923

St. Joseph News-Press, noting (September 4) that "For more than a year these self-appointed regulators have been terrorizing the community of which Tulsa is the center. Women have been included among their victims under circumstances suggesting a licentious purpose. Whippings have been arranged in advance, with definite time and place, and invitations to attend them have been issued and accepted; and throughout all of this, the 'law' looked on with silence that gives consent," agreed, 

"The governor of Oklahoma was justified in placing the city of Tulsa under martial law. It is an extraordinary measure invoked to correct an extraordinary condition."

"The Duel" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 18, 1923

Closer to home, Oklahoma City Times, not a fan of the new governor, complained that out-of-state media misunderstood the situation in Tulsa:

"Eastern metropolitan newspapers have bestowed much praise on Governor Walton for his firm stand against the invisible empire. ...

"But it is the scope of its influence and activities of which the eastern writers have an exaggerated notion. It did not generally dominate affairs of government. Most counties have had no outrages at all. Many klan candidates were defeated in the last election. The vast majority of the people were untouched by its machinations."

The Oklahoma legislature rebelled against Governor Walton's actions and established a grand jury in Oklahoma City as the basis of formulating charges against him. Walton doubled down, extending "absolute martial law" over the entire state and ordering military censorship of the press.

"Making the Citizens of Oklahoma Over into 100% Americans?" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1923

It took a while for the implications of Governor Walton's declaration of "absolute martial law" to become clear to editorial cartoonists who had drawn against the Klan.

"Military or Masked Government?" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Globe-Dispatch, Sept. 23, 1923

After all, nearly every cartoonist in the country had accepted a role in demonizing dissent during U.S. involvement in World War I. And what practical difference was there to the safety and security of a democratic republic between bomb-throwing anarchists and whip-wielding fascists?

"Anyway It's a ___ch of a Black Eye" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28, 1923

(Note: A mailing label covered all but the last two letters of the fourth word in Ed Gale's caption above. "Bitch" would have made the most sense to me, but I'm fairly certain that was not the word on the Los Angeles Times's front page. Patch? Stitch?)*

"The Wrong Plug, Governor" by Harold Talburt for Scripps Howard, ca. Sept. 26, 1923

When members of the Oklahoma legislature proposed to convene in special session to pursue the Governor's impeachment, Walton threatened to summarily enforce the state constitutional clause that only the governor could call a special session:

"In my effort to return the government to the hands of properly constituted authorities, and secure equal justice for all of our citizens, I do not intend to brook any interference. An attempt to convene the legislature in such an unlawful as has been suggested would be an interference with my efforts, and if they come in here and try such a thing, I will put them all in jail and keep them there as long as I am in office."

The banner headline over the Oklahoma News's front page editorial the next day read "WE WANT NEITHER KLAN NOR KING!"

The editorial urged Gov. Walton to take a little time off to familiarize himself with the state and federal constitutions — as well as the Magna Carta and the Articles of Confederation.

"Has Oklahoma's Governor Been Bitten by That European Bug" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 28, 1923

It's a shame that Oklahoma had no editorial cartoonists in the employ of any of its homestate newspapers. Out-of-state cartoonists, however, had begun to catch on.

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* P.S.: I have since run across this cartoon in another newspaper. The fourth word is indeed "peach."

Q Toon: Closing Time

The Party of Small Government is in charge in Idaho, where the statehouse passed a bill in March to criminalize medical care for transgender youth.

It is only one of over a dozen anti-transgender bills authored by Republicans this year:

In each of these states, the bills would either criminalize health care providers who provide gender-affirming care to minors or subject them to discipline from state licensing boards. Bills in ten states would also allow individuals to file civil suits for damages against medical providers who violate these laws. Bills in six states provide penalties for parents who facilitate minors’ access to gender-affirming medical care.

About half of these bills would further limit access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth by barring certain insurance providers from offering coverage for gender-affirming care, by placing restrictions on the use of state funds or state facilities to provide this care, or by excluding gender-affirming care as a tax-deductible health care expense. Bills in seven states would prohibit certain health insurance plans from offering coverage for gender-affirming care. In eight states, bills would prohibit the use of state funds for gender-affirming care or more broadly prohibit distribution of state funds to any organization or individual that provides gender-affirming care to minors, seemingly regardless of what the funding is used for. In five states, bills would prohibit gender-affirming care by or in government-owned or operated facilities, and by individual providers employed by government entities. In four states, bills would exclude gender-affirming care as a tax-deductible health care expense.

Finally, a bill proposed in Missouri would attempt to limit access to gender-affirming care by classifying it as child abuse similar to the order recently issued in Texas.

Republicans are simultaneously charging full speed ahead with their assault on reproductive rights. 22 states are set to criminalize abortion providers and/or patients, often with no exception for rape, incest, or any consideration of the health of the mother.

An Alabama OB-GYN writing in Slate last week warned that her experience, seeing doctors refuse to treat women suffering a miscarriage for fear of being charged with a crime, will go nationwide as soon as Samuel Alito's draft ruling becomes the Law Of The Land.

...I saw a patient in active miscarriage (bleeding, passing clots, cramping) who had just had an office visit with her primary physician. She was forced to wait more than 48 hours in order to get the results of her bloodwork. Doctors will sometimes check a patient’s levels of HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin, to help distinguish miscarriages from ongoing pregnancies or ectopic pregnancies. I could not understand why someone with all of the clinical signs of a miscarriage in progress was required to wait for much-needed intervention, all the while bleeding and cramping and suffering.

I was angry that the patient’s doctor did not just provide the standard medical treatment for a miscarriage: surgically removing the contents of her uterus, which would stop her pain and bleeding. Then I saw a different patient who was actively miscarrying, and a light bulb clicked on: The doctors were afraid of being attacked by the state of Alabama.

Suffice it to say that Red State women who can afford plane fare to Illinois or Ireland, or perhaps a zealous malpractice attorney, won't be faced with this grim scenario. But for the woman barely making ends within shouting distance of each other at a minimum wage job, or the girl still living under the roof of her rapist... well, we know which lives matter to the GOP, and it isn't yours.

Tulsa Revisited

As I wrote in my post two Saturdays ago, I am sure that there were more editorial cartoons to be found about the 1921 Tulsa Pogrom than the two I had managed to locate at the time. Sure enough, cartooning blogger Mike Peterson has come up with a third:

"This Happened in America" by James in St. Louis Star, ca. June 2, 1921

It occurs to me that this incident may have created some cracks in the political alliance Black American leaders had had with the Republican Party since the Civil War.

The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s on an anti-slavery platform, and the election of its first successful presidential candidate resulted in southern secession and the Civil War. Radical Republicans instituted Reconstruction after the war, only to lift it in 1876 in order to finagle Rutherford Hayes into the White House. Reactionary Democrats then took back control of southern governments, and the "Solid South" became a major force in Democratic Party politics for generations.

With a few exceptions, post-Reconstruction Republican politicians had little to say about Black Americans' civil rights. Then Tulsa launched the genocidal attack on its Black citizens.

Less than a week later, President Warren Harding mentioned the Tulsa Holocaust at the graduation ceremony at Lincoln University Theological Seminary, a Black institution in Pennsylvania. As I noted in my earlier post, Harding lamented the violence, but promised to do nothing about it. 

"Much is said about the problem of the races. There is nothing that the government can do which is akin to educational work in value. One of the great difficulties of popular government is that citizenship expects government to do what it ought to do for itself. No government can wave a magic wand. The colored race, to come into its own, must do the great work itself. The government can only offer the opportunity."

Imagine yourself sitting there as a member of the graduating class of 1921, and this is all that the President of the United States has to say about the worst peacetime slaughter of men, women and children in the nation's history — only six days after the fact. That Republican president, with Republicans in complete control of both houses of Congress, did absolutely nothing to investigate, prosecute, remedy, or redress the situation.

Those graduating seminarians knew that no good would come from the local officials in Tulsa, or Democrat-majority state government in Oklahoma. That was to be expected. But the Republican response, presaging 21st Century thoughts and prayers alone, had to be a grave disappointment.

That graduating class were community leaders in their 30's when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt became president, turning 40 when Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practice Committee, and nearing 50 when Harry Truman's President's Committee on Civil Rights prompted the Dixiecrats to bolt the party.  Dwight Eisenhower may have been the GOP's last chance to win back the Black vote; Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon were more interested in currying favor with racist southern Whites. 

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I haven't been able to come up with background on "James," the cartoonist at the top of today's post. I had already seen some of his other work reprinted in Independent Magazine and consistently credited to St. Louis Star, but Googling such a common name isn't very helpful. James must have replaced Archibald Chapin, who left the Star effective May 1, 1921 to draw for Country Gentleman in Philadelphia. In 1925, the St. Louis Star Times hired Daniel Bishop as its editorial cartoonist, so unless the Star Times could afford two editorial cartoonists, James's career there may have been quite short.

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Update: The St. Louis Star cartoonist was Roy Harrison James, born 1889 in Zalma, Missouri; cartoonist at the Star from 1920 to 1929. From St. Louis, he moved to Malibu, California to write comedy. It is possible that he died in 1949, but I haven't located an obituary.

Tulsa Time

We are coming up on the centennial of the race riot and massacre that wiped out the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Black Dispactch, Oklahoma City, OK, June 10, 1921

According to contemporary reports, a 19-year-old Black man named Dick Rowland accidentally stepped on the foot of a White woman, Sarah Page, in the Tulsa department store elevator where she worked. She slapped him across the face, and he grabbed her arm. Later reports suggested that Rowland tripped as he entered the elevator and grabbed Page by the arm to stop from falling. Either way, she screamed for the police, who arrested Rowland and charged him with assault and battery.

The next afternoon's Tulsa Tribune reported the story under the headline "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator," casting Rowland in the worst possible light:

"A negro delivery boy who gave his name to police as "Diamond Dick" but who has been identified as Dick Rowland, was arrested on South Greenwood avenue this morning by officers Carmichael and Pack, attempting to assault the 17-year-old white elevator girl in the Drexel Building early yesterday. ...

"The girl said she noticed the negro a few minutes before the attempted assault looking up and down the hallway on the third floor of the Drexel Building as if to see if there was anyone in sight but thought nothing of it at the time.

"A few minutes later he entered the elevator she claimed, and attacked her, scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes. Her screams brought a clerk from Renberg's store to her assistance, and the negro fled. He was captured and identified this morning by both the girl and the clerk, police say.

"Rowland denied that he tried to harm the girl, but he admitted he put his hand on her arm in the elevator when she was alone.

"Tenants of the Drexel Building said the girl is an orphan who works as an elevator operator to pay her way through business college."

That account (and an inflammatory Tribune editorial, all copies of which disappeared as soon as an official investigation was launched) is credited with inflaming passions in Tulsa; within days, Victor F. Barnett, managing editor of the Tribune, stated that his paper had since learned that the original story, that the girl's face was scratched and her clothing torn, was untrue.

Responding to rumors that Rowland would be lynched and reports that a White mob had massed at the jail, 75 Black men, some armed, arrived at the jail to protect him. Sheriff Willard McCullough assured them that Rowland was safe, so they began to leave.  But then some White man grabbed at a Black man's gun, a shot was fired, and all hell broke loose.

"Tulsa Unmasked" by Henry Brown, orig. pub. unknown, by June 18, 1921

Whites destroyed 35 square blocks of what was until then a thriving African-American community, even attacking it from privately leased airplanes.  For a complete account and contemporary photographs of the violence, I'll refer you to the official report published in 2001 by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riot of 1921.

I have been searching for several months to find editorial cartoons to illustrate today's post; to my great disappointment, I have only found two*. The first is from a presumably Black artist in New York, who may or may not have drawn under a pseudonym; I found it on the front page of the Chicago Whip, an African-American weekly.

"Keeping Right Up with the Procession" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, June 6, 1921

The only other cartoon I've managed to find is this unfortunate example by "Ding" Darling of positing false equivalence between Whites' and Blacks' culpability for the violence. That the black figure looks so much like a gorilla only compounds the offensiveness of the cartoon.

But it's the only cartoon by a White cartoonist I could find anywhere. 

It is not as if the Tulsa riots were not front page news nationwide.

Speaking to the graduating class of Lincoln University Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania on June 6, President Harding lamented the violence, but promised to do nothing about it. "Much is said about the problem of the races. There is nothing that the government can do which is akin to educational work in value. One of the great difficulties of popular government is that citizenship expects government to do what it ought to do for itself. No government can wave a magic wand. The colored race, to come into its own, must do the great work itself. The government can only offer the opportunity."

Opining that White and Black citizens live together peacefully, the Chicago Tribune blamed "corrupt politics": "Corrupt politics is directly responsible for race riots. Let us face that fact and not lose ourselves in secondary considerations. Race riots are not problems of race; they are problems of government. There will be no race riots where politics has not corrupted government" (June 6). The editorial failed to explain how the Trib's charges of corruption were relevant to Tulsa, and probably didn't inspire any daredevil to try integrating any White Chicago neighborhoods to test the "living together peacefully" claim.

The New York Age (June 13) noted an editorial in Birmingham News laying blame for the riot "on the Negroes themselves. This editorial article relates how 'a band of belligerent Negroes' moved down on the jail with the purpose of liberating one of their number charged with an atrocious crime, and gives this as the cause of the uprising of the whites to safeguard the processes of law. It then comments on the actions of the Negroes in the following language: 'It is this attitude, the jungle instinct of the African, which arouses the keen resentment of the whites.'"

The Vicksburg Herald of Mississippi reported (June 8): "It was believed by authorities that the trouble was largely caused by negroes who have been preaching the gospel of so-called 'equality.' Some of these characters are described as fanatics. The white population tonight appeared sympathetic toward the negro refugees and the authorities were guarding against another outbreak of the negroes."

Then there was Independent and Harper's Weekly (June 18), which likened the Tulsa riot to Turkey's Armenian genocide: "World public opinion does not draw the distinctions we would like. Exactly as we hold Turks as a whole responsible, as Americans are held responsible, as a whole, when negro massacre succeeds negro massacre, as for two years past. ... No possible question exists that in the streets of Northern cities as well as Southern, a negro, 'a citizen of the United States' by birth and by every constitutional right, has again lacked 'the equal protection of the laws,' pledged by the Fourteenth amendment." Sharply disagreeing with President Harding, the editorial predicted, "If the States continue to fail in their duty the American people will place the task in Federal hands."

Tulsa Daily World, third extra edition that day, June 1, 1921

So where were the nation's editorial cartoonists in all this?

"The Disgrace" by Haydon Jones in New York Evening Post, March 30, 1921

There were some I had hoped would have spoken up, such as Haydon Jones. In March, Jones drew this cartoon in reaction to a murder case in Georgia involving a white landlord, John S. Williams, who had eleven Blacks working as peons on his farmland killed. (Yes, Georgia had "peonage," and so did Oklahoma for that matter.) I looked to find what Jones might have drawn in response to the Tulsa riot, only to discover that he apparently stopped drawing for the New York Evening Post in mid-April.

A photoengravers strike in New York (I'll come back to that on another Saturday) may have stopped a couple other cartoonists who might have addressed the massacre. Meanwhile, with Cartoons Magazine running only gently humorous cartoons, and periodicals such as Outlook and Independent preferring photographs to convey the horror rather than cartoonists' work, there are several cartoonists who I think are likely to have drawn about the event whose work I just haven't managed to access.

Furthermore, there quickly followed more unrest in Europe, the catastrophic Pueblo Flood in Colorado, a violent strike of miners in West Virginia, lurid crime stories, and all manner of shenanigans in state and local politics. White cartoonists' attentions and those of their publications moved on and moved away.

Chicago Whip, June 11, 1921

The Monitor, Omaha, June 16, 1921

African-American newspapers around the country, not surprisingly, followed developments closely. Very few of them, however, kept cartoonists on as regular features at this point in history. (Side note: The Tulsa Star, a vibrant Black-owned newspaper, was deliberately targeted and its building burned to the ground in the riot; no copies of the paper after January 29, 1921 exist.)

Evening News, San Jose California, June 2, 1921 

Perhaps even more shockingly than the predictable tendency of newspapers, especially in the American South, to blame African-Americans for the violence inflicted upon them, there were other supposedly professional journalists who simply did not take the matter seriously. At all. This dismissive newspaper headline was not published in Dixie, but in sunny California. Playing up local stories is not the issue;  I understand that some words change connotation over time; and I wasn't expecting 21st Century language sensitivity — but what the heck, Evening News? "Tulsa Negroes" wouldn't fit on that line?

"Life's Darkest Moment" by Harold T. Webster in New York Herald, Sept. 27, 1921

Getting back to cartoons: one comes across the occasional cartoon making light of America's race relations problem. Cartoons perpetuating the stereotype of African-Americans as lazy, unintelligent, or worse abounded. Even the normally gentle and benign work of H.T. Webster includes this specimen that, while avoiding insulting caricature, has not aged well.

I think you can, however, compare it to any of today's cartoons (including my own) of Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the QAnon Shaman, and other conspiracy fabulists. Who can predict what will be seen in retrospect 100 years hence as making light of the reprehensible?

_______

* P.S.: Fellow cartoon blogger Mike Peterson has dug up a third. As I wrote above, I am sure that there were more to be found. I'll post them as they turn up.