Q Toon: Ogles Tweets the Silent Part

Congresscritter Andrew Ogles (R-TN) greeted the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month by tweeting (since it hasn't been "Twitter" for some time now, should we say xitting?), "Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month."

Criticism of Ogles from Democrats was predictably harsh, but Congress members from his own side of the aisle also distanced themselves from Ogle's xitpost. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called the post "untoward." House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) called it "inappropriate." Rep. Mike Lawler  (R-NY) went further, calling it "idiotic" and "fucking stupid." Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) averred that "I think the behavior of consenting adults is their business."

Ogles responded by deleting the xitpost and blaming it on “a member of my comms team” who has since "been reprimanded."

Republicans and Democrats both criticized Ogles just three months ago when he (or that naughty comms person) posted a pile of xits over several days that "Muslims don't belong in American society" and "America is for people named Andrew Jackson, NOT Mohamed Mohamed."

Ogles didn't bother to delete those xitposts.

By the way, as for the "Nuclear Family Month" crack, well, that's just Tennessee's (and Indiana's) version of Let's Call It Something Else Month, red states' attempt to cross out LGBTQ+ Pride Month by decreeing that June instead celebrates cisgender heterosexual breeders. 

Governor Spencer Cox declared June "Fidelity Month" in Utah; ditto Governor Sarah Succubus Sanders in Arkansas. It's "Strong Families Month" in Alabama, by which Governor Kay Ivey's declaration specifies "Homes led by stable parents, a father and a mother."

It's not unlike insisting "All Non-Black Lives Matter."

When folks observe Father's Day in a couple weeks from now, these Republicans would like you to know that two-father families have no place in America.

Not that they would actually say so. That's just a little secret between D, E, and I.

Toon: The 60% Solution

At the risk of giving GQP politicians ideas...

On April 29, well ahead of its usual timetable of issuing rulings in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a congressional map that had been the result of a lawsuit against Louisiana's 2021 redistricting plan. A lower court had ruled that the 2021 map packed the state's Black voters into a single congressional district in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The Supremes continued their gutting of that Act, decreeing that as long as lawmakers are not actually wearing swastikas and Klan robes when they draw congressional district lines, they can discriminate against whomever they want.

Louisiana Republicans immediately called a halt to the state's primary elections in which early voting was already underway, so that they could re-redraw district boundaries. (Yesterday’s Senate primary went right on ahead as scheduled.) Fellow Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama, and Utah hurriedly followed suit.

This mid-decade scramble to jigger maps to tilt districts against Democrats was started by Donald Gimme-Gimme Trump's gerrymandering demand to the state of Texas — a demand with which Texan Republicans eagerly and speedily complied. 

Democrats have attempted to answer Texas's unprecedented move, but with mixed results. California drew up new Democrat-favoring maps; but Maryland refused to. New York is constitutionally prevented from mid-decade redistricting, and Virginia's high court tossed out a pro-redistricting popular vote on a legislative technicality that nobody seems to quite understand. The Supreme Court in D.C., after rushing to overrule the lower court ruling in Louisiana, has just decided to let the ruling in Virginia stand without comment.

Is my cartoon really such a far-fetched notion? I wouldn't put it past today's ReTrumplicans to push exactly this idea through every legislature in Dixie and the Great Plains.

Q Toon: Tennessee Tattoo

Legislation continuing Tennessee Republicans' persecution of their transgender minority is working its way through Nashville. Not satisfied with criminalizing transgender care for minors, legally requiring trans men to use women's rest rooms and trans women to shit beside men, forbidding state prisons from allowing gender care medication for trans inmates, et cetera ad nauseam, the state's Republicans now want to require extensive data collection on patients receiving gender-affirming care to the state.

The Tennessee House passed House Bill 754 in March; the Senate passed a version of its companion Bill 676 on Monday, amended to authorize the state Attorney General to investigate non-compliance with the law. 

Supporters of the bill describe the measure as a tool for understanding medical outcomes. Opponents say it is something else entirely. They say it is a mechanism for tracking a vulnerable population. ...

The legislation would require clinics to report detailed information about gender-affirming care to the state, part of a broader effort, lawmakers say, to study treatment trends. But similar proposals in Tennessee have already raised alarms about what happens when “data collection” begins to resemble [patient] identification.

The legislation does not apply to cisgender patients getting estrogen or testosterone treatments, only to transgender patients, making any claims that its intent is to quantify patients who come to regret their transition — a tiny minority within a tiny minority — and to guarantee their right to de-transition —highly suspect. The absolute number of cisgender patients who later regret estrogen or testosterone treatment is probably very similar.

This legislation is not health care. It's intimidation. It’s big government. It’s Big Brother Watching You.

The measure now returns to the Tennessee House for reconciliation with the Senate's amended version. Given the overwhelming Republican majority in both statehouses, passage is all but absolutely certain.

Verdict of the Planet of the Apes

The Graphical History Tour has one more stop to at the Scopes Monkey Trial today. We've got exciting courtroom drama, a momentous verdict, and an unexpected twist at the end <Law & Order .wav>!

"The Monkey Hasn't a Word to Say" by W.A. Rogers in Washington Post, July 9, 1925

Given that President Coolidge, Congress, and the Supreme Court were all on their summer vacations, little Dayton, Tennessee became the center of the editorial cartooning world when the trial convened on July 10, 1925. Some cartoonists, such as Edmund Duffy, J.P. Alley, and Carey Orr, drew two or three cartoons per week about the trial.

After all, if there were only so many gags to be drawn about monkeys, the conflict between science and the Bible was a great source of inspiration — so too was the creationists' ardent defender William Jennings Bryan.

"The Volunteer Fireman" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 14, 1925

On the other hand, there were a few, for example Grover Page at the Louisville Courier-Journal, who did not produce a single cartoon about the trial during the entire month. I suppose that on this issue, Page might have had strong disagreements with his editors or publisher. Or his wife. 

"Fame" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 14, 1925

The Baltimore Sun — hardly a disinterested bystander, its publisher having put up the $500 (almost $9,200 in 2025 bucks) for teacher John T. Scopes's bail — sent their editorial cartoonist, Edmund Duffy, to cover the trial in person.

Courtroom sketches by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 16, 1925

In addition to his regular editorial cartoon, Duffy provided his newspaper with occasional sketches of the trial principals, witnesses, and by-standers.

"The Dayton War Cry" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 15, 1925

There is a rough, sketchy quality to Duffy's cartoons from Dayton. He didn't stick around to witness the second week of the trial; this next cartoon is more typical of his usual output.

"Let There Be Darkness" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1925

Cartooning for the prosecution, the Memphis Commercial Appeal's J.P. Alley defended his state's anti-evolution law and biblical inerrancy. 

"They Ought to Submit a Few 'Exhibits' to the Supreme Court" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 1, 1925

Alley correctly but disapprovingly noted that teacher John Scopes freely admitted having broken the law by teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, and that the defense's intention from the very beginning was to attack the law itself as unconstitutional.

I have noticed that all cartoonists gave John Scopes the title of "Professor," although those who drew him tended to cartoon the 24-year-old teacher diminutive and even childlike.

"4.4 Stuff" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 14, 1925

Here Alley twitted the out-of-state journalists and movie men descending upon little Dayton, Tennessee. Was the trial as disappointing as 4.4 ABV (alcohol by volume) beer? Alley may have been alone in that perception.

(4.4 ABV is light beer to you and me, but considerably more potent than the legal Prohibition limit of 0.5 ABV.)

"Darrow's Paradise" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 15, 1925

Tell us what you really think of "Dangerous Darrow," Mr. Alley.

"Her Bodyguard" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1925

Bravely staking out the middle ground, Carey Orr (who started his cartooning career in Tennessee) offered a defense here of religious faith, but dismissed anti-evolutionists as being of any particular importance to it. We shall get to Orr's regard for its chief spokesman presently.

"Sweet Punishment" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, July 22, 1925

In the last days of the trial, Darrow cross-examined Bryan on the stand — testimony later stricken by Judge Raulston — and Bryan in turn announced the questions he would have posed to Darrow had the judge allowed it.

Pressed by Darrow, Bryan proclaimed that he believed every word of the Bible to be true, although he couldn't answer Darrow's question about where Cain found a wife, how recorded Chinese history could be millennia older than biblical estimates of the planet's creation, or how the snake got around before God condemned it to crawl on its belly ("Do you know whether he walked on his tail or not?").  By the time Darrow brought up the creation of rainbows, both he and Bryan were shouting and pointing fingers in each other's face.

Darrow answered Bryan's questions outside the court. He did not believe in miracles, he said; asked whether he believed in the immortality of the soul, he answered, "I have been searching for proof of this all my life... and I have never found any evidence on the subject." 

Responding to other questions, Darrow said he found "much that is of value in the Bible" but that it was not divinely inspired; and that "the Christ prophesied in the Old Testament was a great Jew who should deliver his people from their physical bondage, and nothing else." 

"The Verdict" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 22, 1925

In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 ($1,837 adjusted for inflation), which came nowhere near covering the cost of the trial. In addition to routine court costs exceeding $300 and hundreds more spent by the prosecution, Scopes's defense lawyers had spent $20,000 to $25,000 bringing expert witnesses to Dayton, some of whom were barred by Judge Raulston of ever offering their testimony.

"Will the Gun Hurt" by Michael E. Brady in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 26, 1925

"When Shall We Three Meet Again" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1925

Emboldened by the Scopes verdict, fundamentalist legislators elsewhere proposed laws similar to Tennessee's. A government clerk, Lauren Wittner, brought suit in Washington D.C. against the teaching of evolutionary theory in the nation's capital on the theory that an appropriations bill passed by Congress forbade the district from using federal funds "to teach disrespect for the Bible." 

"Migrating" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, July 25, 1925

The question appeared destined to be argued all the way to the Supreme Court. Darrow, however, gave notice that he would not represent the evolutionists any further.

Which leaves us with William Jennings Bryan.

"A Chip Off the Old Block" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1925

Bryan had been a prominent public figure for thirty years by the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial — a lifetime for some of the cartoonists our Graphical History Tour features today. Carey Orr, age 35 when he drew this cartoon, could therefore be forgiven for thinking that Bryan had been around since the Garden of Eden.

"Our Greatest Actor" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1925

Or if not since Adam and Eve, Orr suggested, how about these other Old Testament figures?

"Any Port in a Storm" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1925

First elected to Congress in 1890, Bryan was the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908. He was Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, resigning in protest of U.S. entry into World War I. An active proponent of Prohibition, he remained at his party's center stage during their years in the political wilderness.

"You May Not Be For Him..." by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, ca. July 26, 1925

"You may not be for him, but nevertheless, there he is," cartooned Billy Ireland as the Scopes Monkey Trial drew to a close. But suddenly, after thirty years on and off America's front pages, he wasn't.

"The Great Commoner" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha Evening World Herald, July 28, 1925

Still in the town of Dayton, Bryan died on Saturday, July 26 in the home of Richard Rodgers, his host there during the Scopes trial. Bryan had given a stirring speech to townspeople that day, to great acclaim according to press reports. Telling friends that he had never felt better, he enjoyed a hearty meal and retired to his room for a nap. He succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage around 4:45 p.m. and was discovered by his chauffeur about 20 minutes later.

"Onward, Christian Soldier..." by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 28, 1925

As one would expect, cartoonists who defended Bryan, such as Guy Spencer from his home state and J.P. Alley, responded to his death with heartfelt eulogies. Even some dyed-in-the-wool Republicans heaped praise upon the longtime Democratic leader ....

"The Crusader" by Bill Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 28, 1925

"Epitaph for a Crusader" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1925

...even if not necessarily for his politics.

"To the Highest Court of All" by Jesse Cargill for King Features Syndicate, ca. July 28, 1925

I have not included all of the cartoons eulogizing William Jennings Bryan, but I must note that many of the cartoonists who had been lambasting him just days earlier, opted in lieu of drawing something nice to draw nothing at all. Of the cartoonists included above, Nelson Harding appears to have left on vacation as soon as the Scopes trial was over. Edmund Duffy, Ed LeCocq, and Michael Brady devoted their work for rest of July to other topics.

Carey Orr had yielded the editorial cartoonist's space on Chicago Tribune's front page back to John T. McCutcheon, but he still had to produce a cartoon for syndication. So he doffed his hat and took a bite out of it.

"Sorrow in the American Home" by Carey Orr syndicated by Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1925

It has been an extra long Graphical History Tour today, and I thank you for reading this far. Please remain seated until the tour has come to a complete stop, and make sure you have all your personal belongings with you as you disembark.

Q Toon: Parental Rights and Wrongs

The Supreme Court wrapped up its work for the litigation season at the end of June, its 6-to-3 right-wing supermajority handing down a thoroughly predictable series of rulings in support of Trumpster goodthink.

Of interest and disappointment to the LGBTQ+ community, the Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor in favor of a group of parents who demanded to exempt their children from exposure to LGBTQ+ history and literature. The Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic litigants had sued the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board to provide alternative curricula for their children. 

The dispute stems from the county school board’s 2022 approval of books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for use in its language-arts curriculum. One book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, tells the story of a little girl’s reaction to her uncle’s same-sex wedding; another book, Pride Puppy, describes a puppy that becomes lost during a Pride parade. 

The county initially allowed parents to excuse their children from instruction using the LGBTQ-themed storybooks. When the county removed that option in 2023, several parents went to federal court.

Writing for the majority, Dubya-appointed Justice Samuel Alito “what the parents seek here is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children.’”

Clinton nominee Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, countered that the Court's grant of a parental right to veto LGBTQ+-positive public school curriculum materials on religious grounds could mean that “books on evolution and interfaith marriage, and history may be next.”

It's easy to imagine that today's Court majority would have no problem with that.

Meanwhile, the Supremes declined to rule whether parental rights exist outside of their religious rights. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Court ruled Tennessee's SB1 (the number indicating it was the state senate's most urgent business this session) banning medical care for transgender minors, even against the wishes of patient, parents, and medical professionals.

No, parents: you and your transgender child have no say in the child's health care. That is up to the State. No opt-out for you.

The plaintiffs had tried to argue that Skrmetti was about gender discrimination: e.g., a minor the state identifies as male could be prescribed hormone blockers, but a minor the state identifies as female cannot. Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that argument, because the second patient is being discriminated against for being transgender, not for being female, and that's okay.

Influence of Skrmetti has already begun to spread to other transgender concerns. The Seventh Circuit vacated its prior rulin g against anti-trans bathroom policies in public schools. The Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have been instructed to review two decisions involving Medicaid exclusions for gender-affirming medical care, one involving public teachers health insurance plans, and one involving birth certificate policies.

If nobody can come up with a religious liberty argument in favor of transgender medical care, health insurance coverage, and lavatory use, perhaps, my cartoon character suggests, someone could at least raise a faith-based objection to the State mandating who The Lord Your God is.

But I suspect the theocrats on the Court would find some excuse to find reason to infringe that particular religious exercise.

Monkey Business

Hey, Graphical History Tourists! Today’s Silverback Saturday post is about something you’ve actually heard about!

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, and nobody a century ago was more delighted than the nation’s editorial cartoonists.

"Grandpa on Trial" by Douglas Rodgers in Sacramento Bee, May 19, 1925

The trial pitted William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic Party nominee for President and a favorite subject for editorial cartoonists, against Clarence Darrow, a high-profile labor lawyer famous for his defense of thrill murderers Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb in "the trial of the century" one year previous.

Bryan would not be at home in today's Democratic Party: a staunch advocate for Prohibition and of blurring the separation of church and state, he had waged a national campaign against the teaching of evolution.

"He Thinks He's the Defendant on Trial" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 31, 1925

In March, the Tennessee legislature had passed the "Butler Act," named for State Representative John Washington Butler, a farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association. The Butler Act  outlawed the teaching of the theory of evolution, or "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." in public schools, colleges, and universities receiving state funding.

"Fe, Fi, Fo, Fist..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 21, 1925

Bryan publicly thanked Tennessee Governor Austin Peay for signing the Butler Act into law, saying, "The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis."

"Damming the Streamlet and Loosing the Torrent" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, May 22, 1925

(In an unfortunate editing decision, LeCocq's cartoon happened to run immediately alongside a headline about a boy fatally drowned after falling from a dam.)

"He Put Us on the Map" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1925

The trial of John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science and math teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was not a case of the state singling out and persecuting a principled teacher minding his own business. 

Scopes was in fact recruited by the publicity-seeking manager of a financially struggling coal and iron company in Dayton, the county superintendent of schools, and an attorney to test the new law on the grounds that state law also required teaching from a textbook, Civic Biology: Presented in Problems by George William Hunter. Hunter's book explained and endorsed the theory of evolution; a biology teacher could therefore be in violation of Tennessee law whether he taught the theory of evolution or not.

"Listening In" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, May/June, 1925

Charges were filed against Scopes on May 5, but there is actually some doubt as to whether he ever actually taught students the theory of evolution in the first place. He coached three students to testify in preliminary proceedings that he had, and he was formally indicted on May 25. 

"At Work" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, May 12, 1925

We here at Graphical History Tour Central promise to keep you updated on this broken news a century after it develops.

In the meantime, gratuler med syttende mai!

Skøl!

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.

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."