The Nastiest Cartoons

As the world around us has evolved, so have the ways we process those changes in the public sphere. This site explores the ways women and different ethnicities and races were portrayed in political cartoons as the fight for equality became mainstream. An artist by trade, Nast's cartoons were works of art with careful attention to detail and embellished sceneries in addition to the starring caricatures. Often, Nast's cartoons looked more like a painting or illustration instead of a sketch. With a flare for the dramatic, the caricatures in Nast's cartoons were exaggerated and wild, meant to illustrate a point instead of an accurate look at the politicians of the period.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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                                                               (National Museum of American History, Portrait of Thomas Nast by Thomas Nast)

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Where newspapers were once the main form of public communication, the news became shared through sound waves as the radio became a household item beginning in the late 1800s. People had less time to sit and read articles, let alone study intricately drawn political cartoons. However, with the invention of the camera, the public learned the faces of important society individuals and politicians of the day. Those that continued to sip their morning coffee over a copy of the Washington Post looked for more realistic and recognizable individuals drawn by Berryman, replacing the wild caricatures that made Harper's Weekly famous. Still with some landscapes and clever captions, Berryman's work seems to have focused more on making a politician recognizable instead of insulting him with a convoluted caricature. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                   (Clifford K. Berryman Cartoon Collection, National Archives, Clifford Berryman by Berryman)

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By the mid-20th century, television sets were set up in every living room that could afford one. Block's cartoons are made of simple sketches with hardly any background scenery. Political cartoons were largely printed in only black and white by Berryman's tenure at the Washington Post, but his shading and technique added texture to his drawings. Block's cartoons look more like sketches drawn with a black marker. Where the attention-span of the average American decreased as the decades increased, Block focused on witty and brief captions or titles to get his point across as quick as possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                    (Herbblock!, Library of Congress, Herbert Block by Herblock)    

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Gender

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During the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, women were depicted by Nast as maternal care-givers to children of the Union or nurses to wounded soldiers of the Civil War. As a mythical representation of the innocence and maternity of women in the 19th century, Nast chose Columbia as the embodiment of the Union so as to gain sympathy for the case to end war. However, women were activists, factory workers, teachers, scientists, and authors, serving their postbellum community as more than just mothers or nurses. By the turn of the 19th century, Berryman includes women as leaders of the Temperance Movement and advocates for their own right to vote. However, many of Berryman's most iconic symbols were still derogatory toward women. Berryman's "Miss Democracy" is a wrinkly and nagging old lady who constantly tried to keep the employees on Capital Hill in line just like a bossy grandmother. Like Nast, Berryman often played on a woman's maternal instinct and instruction as symbols of critique on current events. 

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Due to Block's career longevity, his portrayal of women from the beginning of his career to his final cartoon differs wildly. Women drawn in the 1940s still represent innocence defenselessness. Block does include women as active participants in World War II, yet as frightened mothers on the home front. By the 1960s through the 1980s, Block championed pay equality and abortion rights and illustrated the many waves of feminism (Herblock: A Cartoonist's Life by Herbert Block, Macmillan Publications, 1993). Where the political cartoons analyzed on this site provide a thin outline of gendered history in modern American history, the different ways women are included and depicted in these editorial drawings do highlight changes in gender roles and laws that previously limited the independence of women. A study of political cartoons drawn by women for women from 1860-2001 would undoubtedly document the efforts of women to break the glass ceilings in their worlds and make their voices heard. While a collection like this doesn't exist, the works of Nast, Berryman, and Block are full of insults and exclusions, exposed by the cartoonists' pen, imposed on women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Larger-than-life politicians and conflicting political beliefs have been easily stereotyped and caricatured for centuries, but, what this site wants to make clear, the caricatures of women in political cartoons only fueled the fire of progress for every woman that read newspapers. 

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Race

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Although regarded as a "melting pot" and country of many origins, the history of race in the United States is far from a cohesive or blended story. The cartoons decoded on this site begin with the struggle to end slavery. While voices of the Union, including President Lincoln, were often hesitant to name the end of slavery as the cause and ultimate goal of the Civil War. Abolitionists were prolific and persistent in the northern states during the Civil War, however, and aside from the Emancipation Proclamation, there was hardly a solid confirmation of the Union's goal to end slavery as their fight in the Civil War. Where political cartoons can often only show one perspective or can portray unfair caricatures, Thomas Nast's work during the Civil War was drawn with an end to slavery in mind. Having grown up in Germany, the idea of slavery was disgusting and unthinkable to Nast. He used his pen to declare that such a thing should no longer exist even when the faces of the Union struggled to do so (this is not to say that Nast believed in total equality of races, but he certainly championed an end to slavery). Nast included African Americans in Civil War-era cartoons as soldiers and citizens who deserved a home, an education, and a family. 

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The three amendments passed during Reconstruction freed black people form the bonds of slavery, protected them under the law, and gave them the right to vote. Black people ran for public office and several, including Senator Hiram Revels, were elected to Congress. However, this brief period of African American activism is often overshadowed in conceptions of the past due to the violence and oppression from the KKK and Jim Crow Laws of the century that followed. However, advocates for an end to discrimination and racism fell silent in the early 1900s massive wave of immigration to the United States. Xenophobia trended throughout the country as families from Asia and Eastern Europe made a new home in America. African Americans are largely absent from Berryman's cartoons as he tended to draw about immigrants and imperialist efforts of the United States in Central America and the Pacific. By studying Berryman's cartoons, its clear that societal racism in the first half of the 20th century was not imposed on only African Americans. 

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As a commentator on both World Wars, Berryman was an expert in mocking the cruelty and brain-washing rhetoric of Germany, Russia, and Italy. A predecessor to Berryman's position at the Washington Post, Block picked up where Berryman left off and continued attacking the violence and ridiculousness across the pond. However, celebrating victories through political cartoons can only exist for so long before celebration becomes critique again. The free world recognized the irony of a country that would fight for world peace, but enforced systems that endured inequality. The Civil Rights Movement was rejuvenated and Block meant to echo the arguments of the activists with his pen. As a critique of the government, Block's cartoons focused on indicting the establishment and highlighting the failures of those in power who could make a difference for black Americans. Block's cartoons during the era spoke directly to and about lawmakers, challenging for a change in hesitancy. Although Block didn't march alongside activists or protest with his own sign, his cartoons didn't go unnoticed. Where political cartoons easily critiqued idiocy and identified corruption, the message of political cartoons by Block's era was one of morality. Block's cartoons had a moral compass and encouraged newspaper consumers to acknowledge north, even if it made them uncomfortable. 

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