KKK Cartoons by “Russell”

One hundred years ago today … Faced with the resurgent Ku Klux Klan, the New York Age printed its third consecutive front page cartoon that decried the white supremacist organization. The January 29th edition is divided into two images, depicting Black men being attacked by the KKK in 1866 and then 1921. It suggests hope for resistance to the organization in modern times.

In the drawing representing 1866, a Black man in rural clothes, barefoot, perhaps a freed slave, runs for his life from a Klan that is acting freely as a vigilante organization; this is a lynching in progress. In the image of 1921, a Black man in a suit and two-tone wingtips faces down the KKK, which cowers at his proclamation, “I believe in law and order.” The words are particularly resonant with our own time in light of the fact that the term “law and order,” adopted by by racist forces in the US starting after the Civil Rights Movement, has resurged as a political dog whistle in the last four-plus years.

Note: NY1920s has been plotting the 1920-1921 rise of the KKK in New York and NYC consciousness over the last several months, especially in posts of January 16 and November 26.

The cartoons were drawn by “Russell”–a staff cartoonist for the Age, whose work (and the Age itself) we have been featuring since our post of January 3, 1920. We have searched but not yet turned up biographical information about Russell. (If anyone knows of any, please tell us where to look!)

Russell’s January 22 cartoon shows the public hoodwinked by the KKK.

On January 15th, he published a more straightforward condemnation that was printed alongside reproductions of KKK printed material that the Age was exposing.

The cartoons were part of the Age’s ongoing reporting about the KKK as it transformed from a southern to a national organization. 

– Jonathan Goldman, January 29, 2021

TAGS: Black history, African American art, cartoons, drawing, race, racism, white supremacy, journalism