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

Q Toon: I Feel For You

All over the country, legislatures and school boards run by right-wing Republicans have been eagerly banning Critical Race Theory in public schools (which is like banning the teaching of how to pilot an airplane in drivers ed) because it makes white students "feel bad."

That is literally how they get around having to admit it's about race.

Of course, there is no limit to things that make students feel bad these days, and we can include having to wear masks, active shooter drills, and dodgeball in that list.

(I could be wrong about those active shooter drills. As I dimly recall, most kids in my day found fire drills and tornado drills to be a welcome diversion — especially fire drills, because we got to go outside. But then, in our lifetime to that point, schools being destroyed by fires or tornadoes with children trapped inside were singular events, if we had heard of such tragedies at all.)

For all the right-wing whining about "cancel culture," Republicans are no slouches when it comes to canceling culture they don't like, and never have been. For every liberal push to censor Huckleberry Finn, there have been conservatives agitating to lock up everything from Madame Bovary to Catcher in the Rye to The Color Purple to Harry Potter to All Boys Aren't Blue — anything that admits to the existence of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-Christian experiences.

By the way, you can look through the American Library Association's Top Ten Lists of challenged books year by year from 2001 to 2020 and decide for yourself who's busier canceling whose culture.

Weimar Weihnachten

It has been a while since we've checked in on what German editorial cartoonists were up to a century ago, so let's see how they celebrated a not so particularly Fröhliche Weihnachten in 1921.

But first, another trigger warning! If you were offended by the words I put in Pat Buchanan's mouth in last Saturday's retrospective, prepare for some unpleasant images here. German cartoonists were no better or worse than their white American counterparts in their depictions of other races and religions. One can argue, I suppose, whose cartoons were more or less responsible for more or less horrific consequences.

"Der Deutschen Treue Weihnachtsbaum" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 25, 1921

We start here with a cover cartoon lamenting the territories Germany lost in the Versailles peace agreement.

I don't believe you should attach any other significance to the six-pointed star, by the way, except that it was the traditional topper for any respectable Weihnachtsbaum. When cartoonists wanted to convey anti-Semitic or racist messages, there was no need to be circumspect about it.

For example:

"Der Verdächtige Christkind" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 11, 1921

Senegalese troops had played a significant role in the Allies' defeat of German troops in the Second Battle of the Marne; von Hindenburg's account in his 1920 memoir, Mein Leben, wrote, "Where there were no tanks our enemy sent black waves against us. Waves of black Africans! Woe to us when these waves reached our lines and massacred or worse, tortured our defenseless men!"

Continued deployment during the armistice of troops from France's African colonies led to the postwar "Black Horror on the Rhine" rumors, kept alive by the nationalist press and cartoonists. Germans concocted stories of Moroccan and Senegalese troops, sent into the Rhineland in 1920 in response to the Reichwehr occupation of the demilitarized zone there, raping German women and girls at a rate of hundreds per day — baseless stories sensationally repeated abroad by horrified Whites, both right-wing and liberal, in Britain, Canada, Sweden, Italy, and the U.S.

Now, "Es" in the last sentence of the cartoon caption is usually translated to English as "It," and the Christkind, who traditionally brings gifts to children in Germany and Austria, is supposed to be a boy angel — but then, angels in art can sometimes look fairly androgynous. This one certainly does; it's probably the skirt. I've translated the pronoun "Es" as "She," reasoning that Lindloff here clearly wants his readers to read his cartoon in light of those "Schwarze Schmach" rape allegations.

"Der Heilige Spekulatius" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Dec. 18, 1921

As you would expect, there were plenty of anti-Semitic cartoons about Jews, such as this one of a banker chasing after St. Nicholas. St. Spekulatius's halo, in this case, is a U.S. dollar; the trim of his gown is decorated with pigs.

Arthur Johnson is making a play on words: spekulatius is a traditional yuletide cookie, often depicting St. Nicholas riding a donkey or horse. The word derives from the Latin "speculator," meaning overseer (and from which we get the word "bishop"), but which also has the meaning of an investor who makes his income betting on the success or failure of others.

Cartoons against speculators in this period were not confined to the German press by any means. Plenty of American cartoonists also criticized profiteers of commodities, rents, and so forth; but while American cartoonists of the 1920's could be equally racist, most of their profiteers were drawn in a more generic, if corpulent, way.

"Die Putschschachtel" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 1, 1922

In Ernst Schilling's yuletide cartoon, the forced demilitarization of Germany after the Great War has resulted in firing squads, attempted coups, and destruction. Nothing working any more, and Krampus seems to be mighty happy about it all.

But even in the doom and gloom of this interwar German Christmas, a few cartoonists managed to view events with a bit of humor that we might even recognize today.

"Das Letzte Paar" by Richard Rost in Jugend, Munich, Dec., 1921

And you thought we had supply chain issues today! 

"Die Botschaft von Washington" by Th. Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, Dec. 21, 1921

Thomas Theodor Heine employs Christmas imagery in this cartoon about U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and the multilateral naval arms limitation treaty being hammered out in Washington D.C. I suspect that Heine saw a resemblance between Mr. Hughes and the traditional German image of Kris Kringle.

And as long as I've brought up the Washington Naval Conference, I'll close with a cartoon that isn't on a particularly Christmasy theme — unless the lectionary at your church next week includes Isaiah 2:4 or Joel 3:10. Whatever. I really like this image.

"Abrüstung" by Erich Wilke in Jugend, Munich, December, 1921

Friede auf Erden und guten Willen für alle!

And if the Christkind shows up at a school in your town this season, it's none of your business which bathroom they use.

Toon: Wisconsin Burning

 

Sunday afternoon, police responding to a domestic violence complaint in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times at point-blank range as he ignored their orders and started to get into the driver's seat of the SUV his children were in. Blake, 29, has been left paralyzed from the waist down, according to his family. Blake is Black; the police officers at the scene are White.

A video filmed from inside a house across the street doesn't show what, if any, danger Blake posed to the officers or the public. A police source tells me that Blake had a knife; but at this point, I have to treat that as one of the many rumors swirling about here. This was not Blake's first encounter with police, yet nobody has claimed that he had no right to have a knife on his person. Second Amendment, you know.

Officially, Kenosha Police Department has been extremely tight-lipped about the incident. They haven't even said what role, if any, Blake played in the initial complaint. Citizens at the scene claim he was breaking up a fight. The officers have not been publicly identified. Kenosha Police are not equipped with body cameras.

Kenosha officials declared a curfew Sunday night, but protests were perverted into violence anyway. Dozens of downtown businesses were vandalized, and half of the inventory of a used car lot was completely burned.

Monday evening, hoodlums from Milwaukee drove to Kenosha in a caravan of cars for the express purpose of looting and rioting. The rest of the vehicles at Car Source were burned. A business owner was beaten trying to defend his shop. At least three uptown businesses were still on fire well into Tuesday and completely destroyed. The smell of smoke filled the nearby church where I work.

Last night, rumors flew that wherever you were, the rioters were coming to your block. As law enforcement and the National Guard continued to concentrate on protecting government facilities, self-styled militias joined the rioters roaming the streets, and property owners took up arms. Three people were shot, two fatally.

(Update: 17-year-old white vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse from Antioch, Illinois has since been arrested and charged with murder in the first degree.)

We expect things to get worse before they get better. 

Pray for justice.

Work for peace.

Q Toon: Left Unsaid

Nearly all LGBTQ Pride festivals were canceled in June because of the COVID-19 pandemic; but in the wake of George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests, many local LGBTQ groups reorganized their pride parades into protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Black Trans Lives Matter" protesters have figured prominently among the LGBTQ contingent. Many LGBTQ communities have been shaken by murders of transgender persons — 18 so far this year — and those victims are disproportionately Black.

Transgender and gender non-conforming people face a heightened risk of fatal violence, and Black transgender women are especially vulnerable because of a "a toxic mix of transphobia, racism and misogyny," according to the Human Rights Campaign. Most transgender people who are killed are victims of gun violence, according to an analysis by research and advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Black transgender persons who wind up in the criminal justice system face discrimination, harsh treatment and worse, often being incarcerated according to their dead gender or else put in solitary confinement. They complain of not having their complaints taken seriously, either when they report a crime, or when they are behind bars.

In spite of this, Black transgender persons have long been overlooked by the White LGBTQ community and shunned by Black justice advocates. But things seem to be different this year.

Take, for example, a recent protest march in Raleigh, North Carolina:

“In many ways, for the LGBTQ community, this is going back to our roots,” said Kendra Johnson, executive director of Equality North Carolina, which has pushed for decades for rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. ...
Johnson sees it as only natural to join forces, because of the overlap of issues but also the layering of identities that lead to multiple forms of discrimination. Johnson is a Black lesbian and says she has experienced prejudice based on her race, her gender and her sexual orientation.
“We’ve been creating space where we try to look at how multiple oppressions affect our lives, and the LGBTQ community is a part of every community,” she said. “And we can’t do our work without also considering how race plays a role in the lives of people in our community.”
...
[Kerwin] Pittman, who helped organize the Raleigh Demands Justice coalition to help push for police reform, said he has learned recently that LGBTQ people of all races continue to be victims of police harassment.
“As a straight Black male, I wanted other straight Black males to see that it’s OK to support these individuals fighting against police brutality,” he said.
Pittman, who plans to attend UNC Greensboro in the fall, said he helped organize the first protest in Raleigh that followed Floyd’s killing. While his group is not affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter organization, he said he wanted to give everyone — Blacks, LGBTQ people and allies of all races and ethnicity — a chance to show they agree with the sentiment that Black lives matter.
“When it comes to brutality, and especially police brutality, we are all the same,” Pittman said. “If you are LGBTQ and injustice is being done to you, I’m going to be there to push as hard for you as if you are someone who is straight. Because at the end of the day, I’m a part of your community and you’re a part of mine.
“When we say Black lives matter, we’re not saying only straight Black lives matter. We’re saying Black lives matter.”

Census Sensibility

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! The parades and fireworks may be subdued or scattered this year, so step back with us to the thrilling days of yesteryear to see what the U.S. was like a century ago.

"Hold Tight, Feller" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Star, ca. February, 1920

1920 was a year for the decennial census, mandated by the Constitution as part of keeping our Congress as representative of the people as possible. Crowded onto Archibald Chapin's sled are the seven most populous cities in the United States, none of which were in the west (Los Angeles came in tenth), or the south (unless you count Chapin's hometown of St. Louis, sixth).

"Census Reports" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1920

The results of the 1920 census revealed a major and continuing shift of the population of the United States from rural to urban areas. Cities' growth came from rural-to-urban migration as well as from overseas immigration, the newcomers attracted by the jobs in the industrial sector. The most striking example was automobile maker Detroit, whose population had doubled since 1910.

Beginning in 1910, the minimum population threshold to be categorized as an urban place was set at 2,500. 'Urban' was defined as including all territory, persons, and housing units within an incorporated area that met the population threshold. The 1920 census marked the first time in which over 50 percent of the U.S. population was defined as urban.

Having just won Congressional majorities in 1918, Republicans realized that going ahead with the constitutionally required reapportionment process would increase the political influence of urban areas where Democratic machines tended to dominate. Reapportionment legislation would stall again and again as rural interests tried to devise mechanisms to blunt the impact of the population shift. Congress would not pass a reapportionment bill until 1929.

"Just Another 'Bumper Crop'..." by Leo Thiele in Sioux City Tribune, ca. June, 1920

Not being able to see that far into their future, editorial cartoonists largely ignored the political ramifications and instead worried that the decrease in farm labor in rural areas would not be able to feed increasing urban populations.

"Help" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June, 1920

U.S. Agriculture Department statistics do show that the number of farm workers began a gradual slide around 1920, even as the total U.S. population kept growing. There were well over 13,000 farm workers in the U.S. that year, working on somewhere around 6,500 farms. Those numbers really head downward after 1940, and are now down around 3,000 and 2,000, respectively.

"Two Viewpoints" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, June, 1920

Detroit cartoonist Burt Thomas did take note of the mutual resentment between rural and urban citizens. His farmer sees all the benefits of prosperity going to those city slickers, while his urban laborer finds his wages depressed by the hicks in the sticks.

"How Times Have Changed for 'The Poor Working Girl'" by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Assn., May, 1920

Leo Bushnell's take on working women is pretty idealized, but it is true that urbanization and the recently ended war had opened up new roles for women. The Nineteenth Amendment was still a state short of ratification when this cartoon was drawn

"Now, John, When I Was a Young Codger..." by George W. Rehse in New York World, June/July, 1920

The industry behind the population boom in Detroit had effects nationwide, as shown in this George Rehse cartoon and the popularity of "Gasoline Alley" and its imitators.

"Improving the Scenery" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July, 1920

Advertisers certainly had taken note of all those people riding around in their automobiles. Within cities, advertisements attached to or painted on the sides of buildings were common; out in the countryside, freestanding billboards proliferated as more and more people took to the roads.

The earliest recorded billboards actually date back to 1867, followed five years later by the founding of the advertisers' lobbying group, the International Bill Posters Association (since renamed the Outdoor Advertising Association of America).

While I appreciate the point he's making about uglifying the scenery, I have some qualms about resurrecting Mr. Bronstrup's cartoon because of its superfluous use of an African-American stereotype on the smokeless tobacco ad — the only face visible anywhere in the cartoon. I can't tell whether he's reflecting a common trope or making a criticism of it; but the thoughtless racism of the day would have rendered such a rude caricature completely unremarkable. Nearly all white cartoonists drew Black people in this way (John Cassel is a notable exception).

Coming around full circle, I'll close with this from Magnus Kettner:

"The Joyriders" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, ca. July 13, 1920

The scarf of the woman in the front seat reads "Extravagance," and I can understand why the farmer might resent her "hollering about the high cost of food stuff." If he feels the same way about the back seat passengers, "High Production" and "Shorter Hours," I guess he must be raising sour grapes.

Q Toon: Non Compass Mentis

Daddy wasn't using it, anyway.

Stonewall Semicentennialback Satureve

Given that my blog features my editorial cartoons for the LGBTQ+ press, plus a regular Saturday feature of old cartoons marking this or that anniversary, you might expect that tomorrow's post will feature a bunch of 50-year-old cartoons about the Stonewall Riots.

Well, it won't.

The fact is, the nation's editorial cartoonists hardly took note of Stonewall (and most probably would have drawn cartoons demeaning the rioters if they had). Outside of New York, few newspapers even reported the uprising. As riots go, Stonewall was overshadowed by racial riots in several U.S. cities, including Omaha, Nebraska; Kokomo and Marion, Indiana; Des Moines, Iowa; Middleton, Ohio; and Waterbury, Connecticut that same week.

"The President Says He'll Cover That..." by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca. June 28, 1969

But since it is the 50th anniversary of Stonewall today, here are a few modest examples of what editorial cartoonists were drawing about at the time. The Nixon administration, and, for some reason, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, announced plans to withdraw some of the American troops from the war in Vietnam. The Nixon administration also withdrew the nomination of Dr. John Knowles to be Assistant Secretary for Health and Science Affairs in what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

"Tell Them We Did Everything We Could" by Gene Basset for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, ca. July 1, 1969 

One of the issues that sunk the Knowles nomination was his support of all-inclusive health insurance so that poor people could afford health care, by the way, just in case you thought that was a new-fangled concept.

"Aren't We Suppose to Get Some Foreign Aid First" by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Today American. ca. June 30, 1969

And let's see... We were about to send our first manned mission to the moon — which is pretty fricking amazing when you consider that the moon landing was 50 years ago now, and 50 years before that, we had only just succeeded in flying across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

"His Critics Never Broke Through...," unsigned (Ted Shearer?) in Washington (D.C.) Afro-American, July 1, 1969

And Chief Justice Earl Warren stepped down from the Supreme Court. I've already discussed how Republicans Merrick-Garlanded President Lyndon Johnson's nominees to succeed Warren, so it's hardly worthwhile to repeat myself today.

"That Cat's on Crab Grass" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, ca. June 29, 1969

Oh, there was plenty of other stuff, but most of it just doesn't inspire a whole lot of nostalgia (I'm not quite old enough to wax nostalgic about 1969 anyway...although I have sometimes wished I still had the drug awareness workbook we had in elementary school, just to see how well I remember it) or insightful commentary.

"To Soothe the Savage Breast" by Bill Crawford for Newspaper Enterprise Association, ca. July 1, 1969

So tune back here tomorrow morning for a slew of cartoons half a century older than these.

African-American History 1919

In honor of African-American History Month, Sepiatoneback Saturday brings you this John H. Cassel cartoon, along with a paragraph added by Cartoons magazine, celebrating the contribution of African-American soldiers during World War I.

One note before I go on: there must have been African-American artists from this period who took inspiration from the Great War, but I don't have any examples of their work here. Every cartoonist and artist in this post was a white male.

"The Colors" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World, February 13, 1919

I do not know what exactly it was that prompted Cassel to draw this cartoon, but it stands alone against a slew of cartoons demeaning the service of Black soldiers.

Update: New York welcomed home its Harlem Hellfighters (about which, more below) on February 18, 1919. Sidney Greene at the New York Evening Telegram also drew a celebratory cartoon about the African-American regiment's triumphant parade. The quality of this reproduction isn't very good, but it's enough to get the point across.

"1865-1919" by Sidney Joseph Greene in New York Evening Telegram, February, 1919

It was not editorial page cartoonists but comic page and gag cartoonists who, even after the war, churned out unfunny cartoons depicting Black servicemen as malingering buffoons. Whoever wrote that paragraph underneath Cassel's cartoon could have easily identified "the chap who said... they wouldn't fight" by leafing through recent issues of Cartoons magazine itself.

For just one comparatively tame example, on the recurring theme of Black soldiers showing up at the field hospital:

"Perpetual Motion" by J.C. Curry in Cartoons Magazine, November, 1918

I would be ashamed to resurrect many of the cartoons about African-American soldiers. Some of them portray Black servicemen quite literally as monkeys; most caricature them in the manner of blackface minstrel shows that demonstrate why wearing shoe leather on one's face that way is offensive to many nowadays.

But so as not to leave the subject with that taste in our mouths, here's another cartoon by John Cassel which appears to be modeled on the same individual soldier as the one in "The Colors"; it accompanied an editorial joining Allied Armies Commander Gen. Ferdinand Foch and American Gen. John Pershing in praising the valor of Pvt. Henry Johnson and Pvt. Needham Roberts of the Harlem Hellfighters:

"Black—Also Red, White and Blue!" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World, May 22, 1918

The editorial extended that praise to all African-American service men and concluded:

"There is just one way the American people as a whole could recognize the valor of Privates Johnson and Roberts, colored, in a manner worthy of the nation:
"To resolve that so long as negro fighters face the enemy and thereafter so long as the Republic they have helped to defend endures, throughout the length and breadth of the United States, law, public condemnation and swift punishment for the guilty shall combine to make the lynching of a negro an abhorred and obsolete crime."

✍

Returning now to 1919: Over German protests, Germany was stripped of its African colonies after the war. In the American press, German brutality figured prominently as justification for this particular punishment — not just German brutality toward its African subjects, but also the horrific acts claimed by the Entente to have been inflicted upon Belgian citizens. The irony there is that Belgium had committed a longer list of atrocities against its African colonial subjects.

"She'll Never Work for Him Again" by Herbert H. Perry in Sioux City (IA) Journal, ca. February, 1919

Of the cartoons I've found showing Africans happy to be no longer subjects of the German Empire, this is probably the least offensive. That is setting the bar very low, obviously.

The bar is set equally low in the references in the proposed League of Nations charter to the citizens of colonial holdings. Article XIX is loaded with a paternalistic attitude toward nations of color:

To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the states which formerly governed and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization, and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in the constitution of the league.

The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their experience, or their resources, or their geographical position, can best undertake this responsibility, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as mandatories on behalf of the league.

"When the German Colonials Vote" by Leo Cheney in Passing Show, London, ca. February, 1919

European depictions of Africans are just as bad as the American ones (and casually use equally vile language). There is, however, at least a smidgen of sympathy for the fellow on the left of Leo Cheney's cartoon, having to choose among home rule (with "free fire water"), allied protection ("and keep your skin whole"), and continued German rule (with "free torture for all").

"The Operation Was Entirely Successful" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, ca. February, 1919

Racist or not, Edward Gale's "The Operation" is just creepy.

Cartoonists such as Herbert Perry of the Sioux City Journal could at least be excused (somewhat) for their caricatures of Black people because — well, assuming — they had never ever met one in person. But, gawd, where the hell did Gale come up with his idea of how surgery is done?

✍

As I sign off for the day, here's an enlisted man's sketches of Black American soldiers in France for Stars and Stripes and his memoir of the Great War.

"Stevedores" by Pvt. Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge in Stars and Stripes, ca. February, 1919

"Among the First Sent Across" by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge in his I Was There, Knickerbocker Press, 1919

"Base Port Stevedores" by C.L. Baldridge in I Was There, Knickerbocker Press, 1919