(jazzy piano music)
- [Beth] We're looking at an 1874 political cartoon
by Thomas Nast.
Doesn't have an official title,
but it's often called "The Union As It Was,"
or "Worse Than Slavery."
- [Kimberly] Political cartoons can be hard,
because we've lost the visual language
that they refer to, and that everyone at the time
would have easily recognized.
- [Beth] Contemporary viewers would have seen this
in context in "Harper's Weekly" magazine,
a Northern newspaper that supported Abraham Lincoln
and the Republican Party.
- [Kimberly] So at its most basic, we're seeing two figures,
one facing us on the right,
one with his back to us on the left,
reaching out to one another
and shaking hands above a skull and crossbones,
which sits at the top of a shield
in which we see a Black family
and scenes of violence behind that family.
The figure on the left is clearly labeled
as being from the White League, and he holds a weapon,
as does the figure on the right, who's clearly labeled KKK,
and we can also recognize him from his uniform.
- [Beth] And smaller details here also tell us a bit
about what's going on.
We can see that at the bottom of that shield,
there's an open book that has the alphabet in it,
and we see a school house that's got smoke rising from it.
They represent efforts by formerly enslaved people
to get an education in the years after the Civil War,
and then behind the kneeling woman,
we see a man who's been lynched.
So when we see these two figures
shaking hands above this scene of terror,
it looks like a conspiracy between the White League,
which was an 1870s paramilitary group
that openly crushed Black political participation
in the South, and the KKK.
- [Kimberly] The federal government
has been able to some degree
to quash the activities of the KKK,
but the White League and similar organizations
were born during this period.
We see the figure from the White League from behind,
but he's not disguised in the way that the figure
from the KKK is.
The White League was acting more in the open.
People knew the names of, in many cases,
Confederate veterans who were taking part
in the White League and similar organizations.
- [Beth] We see in the upper left corner a bayonet,
a weapon that is affixed to the end of a rifle,
that suggests that this man is a Confederate veteran.
He has a weapon that would have been issued
by the Confederate army, and has both the equipment
and the training to continue the fight
to disenfranchise Black voters in the South.
And this cartoon is drawn
about a year after the Colfax Massacre,
which took place in Louisiana,
in which more than 100 Black militia members
were slaughtered by the White League.
This moment in the 1870s
is a really critical moment for Reconstruction.
It's been eight plus years
since the end of the Civil War.
There's a question of whether the federal government,
whether the North is going to turn away
from its commitment to African American equality
in the South and allow white supremacy to reemerge.
"This is a white man's government"
was a statement from the 1868 Democratic platform,
and remember, at this time, the Democratic
and Republican Parties espoused different positions
than they do today.
The Democratic Party for the most part was associated
with slavery states' rights
and white supremacy in the South,
and the Republican Party was associated with national
and federal government and African American rights.
So in showing "This is a white man's government,"
Thomas Nast is trying to make a connection
between the Democratic Party, racial violence in the South,
and encourage his viewers to vote for the Republican Party.
- [Kimberly] These figures are represented sympathetically,
and not at all like the kinds of caricatured images
of Black figures that we would see normally
in so many political cartoons and other images
from the period, where they're represented
with prominent jaws and wide eyes,
and we often see these figures dressed in rags
with bare feet.
- [Beth] Women are often depicted wearing kerchiefs
on their head, which was a symbol
of Black female subservience.
You think of Aunt Jemima, for example.
So even though Nast is trying to create a sympathetic image,
he's still drawing on elements
typical of racist 19th century depictions of Black people.
- [Kimberly] So when I look at this cartoon
from a art historical point of view,
I see two figures on either side of a shield,
and if we go back in art history,
we can see that this was a common motif.
Sometimes they could be allegorical figures on either side,
sometimes putti, and those Renaissance images get drawn on
for one of the early designs for the Great Seal
of the United States of America, where we see two figures
representing war and peace on either side of a shield
with stripes and above it stars
representing the United States.
And we can follow this imagery to a print
which depicts on one side, Abraham Lincoln,
and on the other, George Washington,
each with their hands on a shield
representing the United States.
This is a print made shortly after Lincoln's death,
commemorating Lincoln and aligning him
with George Washington, an image that represents the idea
of national unity.
But in Nast's cartoon, that idea of unity
is really a conspiracy to commit violence
and to disenfranchise and control the labor
of formerly enslaved people.
- [Beth] Viewers of the cartoon
would immediately have recalled
an earlier Nast cartoon from during the war,
called "Compromise With The South."
This became nationally famous in 1864.
At that time, some Democrats opposed Abraham Lincoln,
and they wanted to make peace with the South
to allow the Confederacy to go its own way
and slavery to continue,
and Nast drummed up considerable support
for Abraham Lincoln with this image
showing how US soldiers would have died in a useless war
had the United States decided to make peace
with the Confederacy, and that slavery would continue,
as we see with the image of the Black family kneeling
once again, and we can see that this is something
that Nast thinks is tragic
by the figure of Columbia, an allegorical figure
representing the United States,
kneeling and weeping before this grave.
- [Kimberly] So once again,
an agreement between white people
that will have this terrible impact on a Black family,
and we see this in other Nast cartoons.
For example, one called, "This Is A White Man's Government,"
where again, figures are shaking hands,
and a formerly enslaved person is being trampled on
on the ground beneath their feet.
- [Beth] In some ways we can see these cartoons
as a continuation of the same story.
In 1864, the Democratic Party
suggesting compromise with the South.
In 1868, the Democratic Party
working with Nathaniel Bedford Forrest,
the founder of the KKK, to enact the platform,
"This Is A White Man's Government."
In 1874, the White League and the KKK
working together to create a society worse than slavery,
to this cartoon in 1876, which shows a Black man
being forced to vote the Democratic ticket
because this white supremacy and violence
has gone unchecked in the South.
For me, the tragedy of Reconstruction
is that it didn't have to end the way it did,
didn't have to end with another 100 years
before the Voting Rights Act.
History is not a straight upward line
of people getting more and more rights,
becoming more and more free and equal.
Those rights and that equality must be actively maintained.
(jazz piano music)