White Supremacy on the Ballot
The Legacy of Racism in Political Propaganda
A racist 1866 political poster demonizes a newly freed African American as being idle "at the expense of the white man." This poster was one of a series of broadsides produced in support of Hiester Clymer, a racist and a 1866 candidate for the governor of Pennsylvania. He ran on a white supremacy platform against the Republican* candidate, John W. Geary.
The cartoon portrays a barefoot black man in tattered clothes lounging in the foreground, while white men are hard at work plowing a field—captioned, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"—and chopping wood—captioned, "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes."
In contrast, the black man is quoted in stereotypical dialect: "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations."
The poster takes aim at the goals and perceived wastefulness of the Freedmen's Bureau, which was established to protect the newly freed enslaved population. The Bureau was designed to help newly emancipated slaves. It issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary camps, helped locate family members, and promoted education.
A fictional image of the Freedmen's Bureau building, modeled to look like the U.S. Capitol, bears the following motto beneath the dome: "Freedom and No Work." The pillars of the building read, left to right: "Candy," "Rum, Gin, Whiskey," "Sugar Plums," "Indolence," "White Women," "Apathy," "White Sugar," "Idleness," "Fish Balls," "Clams," "Stews," and "Pies."
The second poster specifically characterizes Democratic* candidate Hiester Clymer's platform as "for the White Man," represented here by the idealized head of a young man. In contrast a stereotyped black head represents Clymer's opponent James White Geary's platform, "for the Negro."
Though Clymer lost in the subsequent election, Blacks continued to be misrepresented as lazy and shiftless during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era -and at the same time faced legal barriers from Jim Crow laws and terrorist threats from the KKK. ~ Encyclopedia Virginia
* In the Reconstruction era, the Republican Party, led by Lincoln, was the party of emancipation and civil rights for African Americans, while the Democrats represented Southern whites and opposed Black empowerment. This alignment persisted until the 1960s when, during the Civil Rights Movement, Democrats began supporting civil rights reforms, causing a political shift.
White Southern voters, disillusioned by the Democratic Party’s new stance, gravitated towards the Republicans, especially after Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” appealed to their racial anxieties. Today’s Republican Party, far from its Lincoln-era origins, now aligns with many of the positions once held by Southern Democrats..
For more on the history of racism in America see
Top poster: The Freedman's Bureau! An agency to keep the negro in idleness at the expense of the white man. Library Company of Philadelphia: (6)5777.F.79
Lower poster: A racist pro-Clymer campaign poster for the 1866 governor's election. Library of Congress: Broadside Collection, portfolio 159, no. 9 c-Rare Bk Coll Broadside portfolio 159 no. 9
It is my quest to dig out something funny in every Forgotten File but I came up empty here. Especially since a modern major political party espouses that same shit disguised by only the thinest of veils. That said, I do agree that no one on the dole should get free fish balls or clams. That's wrong.