Analyzing Political Cartoons - US History Honors

·  Using a combination of words and images, political cartoons use humor to make a serious point and often express a political point of view on an issue better than words do.

·  Cartoonists often use exaggeration or caricature to indicate criticism or bias.

·  Analogy is used to compare a simple image or concept to a more complex issue.

·  Irony is used to highlight the difference between the way things are and the way the cartoonist thinks they ought to be.

·  When looking at a political cartoon, you should identify the subject, note important symbols, labels and details, interpret the message and analyze the point of view.

Turn to the cartoon on page 488 of your textbook

1. What political event or idea is the cartoon referring to?

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2. What key people or groups are part of the cartoon’s message?

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3. Explain any symbols used by the cartoonist to portray people or concepts.

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4. Identify any captions, titles, labels, or speech bubbles in the cartoon. How do these contribute to the cartoon’s message? ______

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5. What is the message of this cartoon? How is the cartoonist trying to persuade the reader? ______

Turn to the cartoon on page 499 of your textbook

1. What political event or idea is the cartoon referring to?

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2. What key people or groups are part of the cartoon’s message?

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3. Explain any symbols used by the cartoonist to portray people or concepts.

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4. Identify any captions, titles, labels, or speech bubbles in the cartoon. How do these contribute to the cartoon’s message? ______

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5. What is the message of this cartoon? How is the cartoonist trying to persuade the reader? ______

The transparency shows a political cartoon from October of 1874 created by German immigrant Thomas Nast (1840-1902). Nast was the first cartoonist to have the advantage of weekly publication in a magazine with national circulation - Harper’s Weekly (1862-1886). A radical Republican, Nast skillfully used allegory and melodrama in his art to support any cause he believed was just.

Study the picture carefully and answer the following questions briefly in the space provided.

1. Describe the message conveyed by this cartoon.

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2. What does the label on the shield “Worse than Slavery” mean?

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3. What images of violence does the cartoonist use to convey his message?

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4. What emotions are portrayed by figures you see in the cartoon?

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5. What does the handshake represent?

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Writing exercise:

How effective were the Ku Klux Klan and other white resistance movements in undermining southern Reconstruction governments even before the end of Reconstruction in 1877?

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Text appearing in Harper’s Weekly October 1874 along with Thomas Nast cartoon “Worse Than Slavery”.

WORSE THAN SLAVERY

How easily wicked and treasonable organizations may gain the control over the peaceable and the industrious members of society has always been signally apparent at the South. A band of wild and desperate young men, maddened with whisky and torn by demoniac passions, is the governing power in Texas and Alabama, Georgia, and even Kentucky. Masked, armed, and supplied with horses and money by the Democratic candidates for office, they ride over the country at midnight, and perpetrate unheard-of enormities. It is said, and no doubt truly, that not one in a hundred of their fearful deeds is ever told. Their enormous vices and crimes are faintly depicted in the Ku-Klux reports of 1872. Yet before these infamous associations Southern society trembles. They rob, they murder, they whip, they intimidate; yet no man, white or black, dares to denounce them. If a colored man ventures to tell of some frightful assassination which he saw in the dim midnight, he is himself dragged from the prison where he had been placed for safety and slaughtered, as happened recently in Tennessee, with horrible mockeries. If a United States official becomes conspicuous in politics, he is carried into the woods and shot, as at Coushatta. In Alabama and Louisiana the bands of young ruffians patrol the country by day as well as night, shooting down Republican voters. According to a recent estimate, there is a Republican majority of 20,000 in Louisiana, yet M’Enery and his band of assassins claim to have carried the last election, and hope to win the next by their usual outrages. Nor does any Southern paper in Georgia, or Alabama, or Texas, and scarcely in Tennessee, venture even to denounce the murderers or the violators of the laws; or if any Northern journal, roused to a proper indignation by the wrongs inflicted upon peaceable settlers and citizens in the disturbed districts, calls for the suppression and punishment of the lawless crew, it is at once placed under the ban of the secret associations. Such journals (exclaims the Austin Daily Statesman) "are more to be hated than the rattlesnake." Harper’s Weekly has been especially marked in this way, and its sale is forbidden by no unmeaning threats to the booksellers of Austin. The White Leaguers are resolved that the power of a free press shall never be felt in the South, and hope to pursue their career of crime unimpeded by the voice of humanity or reason.