The Nastiest Cartoons

The battle for race equality in the United States didn't end with the Civil War. Thomas Nast began his cartooning career by drawing realistic scenes of the Civil War to communicate the events of the war for the readers of Harper's Weekly, but his work hardly represents the experience of a black individual in the United States. During the period of Reconstruction, Nast's cartoons depicted the conflicts and debates over how to move on from slavery and introduce freed African Americans into 19th century society. However, Nast rarely drew African Americans as their own activists. The cartoons below from the 19th and 20th centuries exhibit the different kinds of racism present in the country across decades, but largely omit the efforts and achievements of African Americans to emancipate themselves. 

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Where immigration to the United States from all over the globe become restricted based on ethnic prejudice and xenophobia, racism was applied to many different demographics. These cartoons, whether intentionally or not, display the variety of racism that existed in modern American history. However, the message of the cartoons are largely complacent with the status of racism at the time they do little to counter the discrimination and prejudice that existed in society. Although political cartoons do not provide a comprehensive or justifiable history of racism in the country, it is still significant to analyze the ways different ethnicities and races were portrayed in everyday newspapers.