The Cartoons of Evansville's Karl Kae Knecht

by James Lachlan MacLeod

  71. “Mesker Zoo Story,” Evansville Courier.

  72. “At the Zoo,” Evansville Courier.

  73. “Zoo Attendant Taken by Death,” Evansville Press.

  74. “Zoo Superintendent Bob McGraw Dies,” Evansville Press.

  75. “Say Kay! Shows, N’Such by Karl Kae Knecht,” Sunday Courier and Press. I am grateful to Erin Gibson for pointing this article out.

  76. “Honors Heaped upon Knecht at Birthday Party,” Evansville Journal.

  77. Early to Fehn, December 4, 1933. It was signed by Stephen Early, who was FDR’s press secretary.

  78. Roosa to Fehn, December 4, 1933.

  79. Noelting to Knecht, December 4, 1933; Eichel to Fehn, December 1, 1933.

  80. Berndt et al. to Knecht, December 1933. The signers were Walter Berndt (who drew Smitty), Martin Branner (Winnie Winkle), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Carl Ed (Harold Teen), Frank Willard (Moon Mullins) and Sidney Smith (The Gumps).

  81. “Honors Heaped upon Knecht at Birthday Party,” Evansville Journal; Jensen, Amazing Tom Mix, 117.

  82. McIntyre to Fehn, December 2, 1933.

  83. Scism, “Real ‘Guy,’ in Other Words,” Evansville Courier Extra.

  84. “Folks Worth Knowing: Karl Kae Knecht,” Editor and Publisher; “Cartoonists as They See Themselves: Karl Kae Knecht,” Literary Digest, 10; “Karl Kae Knecht,” Town and Country Review; Ensley, World of Karl Kae Knecht, 7–8.

  85. McIntyre, “Mister Chairman, La-dees and Gents!” Evansville Courier.

  86. Ensley, World of Karl Kae Knecht, 2.

  87. “Karl Kae Knecht Today Begins 2nd Half-Century with Courier,” Evansville Courier.

  88. “Fifty Years of KKK,” Evansville Courier.

  89. “Creator of 18,000 Cartoons, Courier’s Karl Kae Retires,” Evansville Courier.

  90. Shaw, “Cartoonist’s Impact on Area Great for Over Half Century,” Evansville Courier.

  CHAPTER 2

  91. “Knecht in Chalk Talk,” Evansville Courier, April 10, 1914; “Green Pastures,” Sunday Courier and Journal.

  92. McCutchan, Bartelt and Lonnberg, Evansville at the Bend in the River, 49.

  93. “Housing Project to Start Monday,” Evansville Press.

  94. “Lincoln Gardens Improvement to the City,” Evansville Press.

  95. “Two Negroes Killed by Mob,” Evansville Courier.

  96. “Fatally Shoots Negro Over a Disputed Nickel,” Evansville Courier.

  97. Fischer, Them Damned Pictures, 72.

  98. Lensmire and Snaza, “What Teacher Education Can Learn from Blackface Minstrelsy,” 414.

  99. Boskin, Sambo, 11.

  100. Thibodeau, “From Racism to Tokenism,” 492–93.

  101. Fischer, Them Damned Pictures, 81.

  102. Melton, Sea Cobra, 16–17; Cutler, Battle of Leyte Gulf, chapter 4.

  103. “Broadway,” Evansville Courier; United States Congress, Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the…Congress, A3783; “Rankin Hits US Coddling of Japs,” Evansville Press.

  104. “Halsey Fights Japs, but Dodges Female Reporters,” Evansville Press.

  105. Quoted in Dower, War Without Mercy, 78.

  106. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, 120; Weingartner, “Trophies of War,” 56; Harrison, “Skull Trophies of the Pacific War,” 817–20.

  107. Johnson and Katz, Herblock, 93.

  108. Minear, Dr. Seuss Goes to War, 25, 138–52.

  109. Schiffrin, Dr. Seuss & Co. Go to War, 17–18.

  110. Low and Howe, Years of Wrath, A Cartoon History; ibid., Cartoon History of Our Times; Bryant, Illingworth’s War in Cartoons, 85.

  111. Erenberg and Hirsch, War in American Culture, 237.

  112. ShiPu Wang, “Japan Against Japan,” 41. These images included the infamous “Tokio Kid Say” posters used by the Douglas Aircraft Company.

  CHAPTER 3

  113. Danjoux, “Reconsidering the Decline of the Editorial Cartoon,” 246.

  114. Klausen, Cartoons That Shook the World, 17.

  115. Isquith, “‘Enduring Power of Cartoons’: How One Man’s Response to Hebdo Went Viral.” Evansville cartoonist James MacLeod said, “Cartoons, for some reason, have provoked this extreme reaction. Of all the things that these highly motivated, highly organized guys could have gone after, they went after a bunch of cartoonists. I think for me the attack illustrated once again the power of the cartoon, still, to have an enormous impact.”

  116. Bonilla, “Drawing Fire,” 77; Abraham, “Anatomy of the Political Cartoon,” 279. Abu Abraham said, “One of the tests of any free society is how free its cartoonists are.”

  117. “Ancient Origin of Cartoon Art Cited by Knecht,” Evansville Courier.

  118. Davis, “Political Cartoons Are Old Stuff,” 382; Hoff, Editorial and Political Cartooning, 19–20.

  119. Guiley, Encyclopedia of Angels, 216.

  120. Klein, Art and Laughter, 13, 16.

  121. Coupe, “Political and Religious Cartoons of the Thirty Years’ War,” 66.

  122. Lindvall, God Mocks, 86–89; O’Hare, Facts About Luther, 158. Almost four hundred years later, the breathless Catholic apologist Father Patrick O’Hare could still say that these were “woodcuts [that] in obscenity and vulgarity have never been surpassed.”

  123. Philippe, Political Graphics, 54. Fascinatingly, this image is often mistakenly interpreted as an anti-Lutheran image. (Luther was, of course, also a monk.)

  124. Heller and Anderson, Savage Mirror, 12.

  125. Shesgreen, Engravings by Hogarth, xxiv.

  126. Bryant and Heneage, Dictionary of British Cartoonists and Caricaturists, 1730-1980, 115.

  127. “Hogarth, the Father of the Modern Cartoon,” Daily Telegraph, November 1, 2014.

  128. Hill, Satirical Etchings of James Gillray, ix.

  129. Rowson, “Satire, Sewers and Statesmen.”

  130. Ibid., Giving Offence, 31–33.

  131. Geipel, Cartoon: A Short History of Graphic Comedy and Satire, 64; Heard, High Spirits, 26. Rowlandson owned several of Hogarth’s prints.

  132. Phagan, Gatrell and Rauser, Thomas Rowlandson, 45, 11.

  133. Geipel, Cartoon: A Short History of Graphic Comedy and Satire, 71; Bryant and Heneage, Dictionary of British Cartoonists, 51.

  134. Vogler, Graphic Works of George Cruikshank, 135; Patten, George Cruikshank’s Life, Times, and Art, 154–55.

  135. Geipel, Cartoon: A Short History of Graphic Comedy and Satire, 71; Bryant and Heneage, Dictionary of British Cartoonists, 72, 74; Shikes and Heller, The Art of Satire, 17. The direct influence of English artists on French artists is seen, for example, in Eugene Delacroix’s copying multiple prints by both Rowlandson and Gillray.

  136. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture, 2.

  137. Navasky, Art of Controversy, 71; Petrey, In the Court of the Pear King, 151. Sandy Petrey recently pointed out that “Louis-Philippe actually looked like a pear.”

  138. “Daumier: A Pauper in Life, a Master in Death,” Sunday Courier and Press.

  139. De la Motte and Przyblyski, Making the News, 55.

  140. Vinson, Thomas Nast, 1.

  141. “Speaker Here Tells History of Cartooning,” Evansville Press.

  142. Masters, “He Gave Politics the Donkey and Elephant,” Sunday Courier and Press.

  143. “Say Kay! What of Folks, Shows, Animals ‘n’ Such by Karl Kae Knecht,” Sunday Courier and Press.

  CHAPTER 4

  144. I am grateful to Tom Lonnberg and Bill Bartelt for information conveyed at the opening to the exhibit Lincoln’s Boyhood in Indiana at the Evansville Museum of Art, History and Science in 2016. The exhibit was sponsored by the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society.

  145. “Knecht Speaks on Cartoons,” Evansville Courier.

  146. Kennedy, “Drawing (Cartoons) from Artistic Traditions,” 10.

  147. Bryant, World’s Greatest War Cartoonists and Caricaturists, 133; Schwartz and
Przyblyski, Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, 157–58. The image appears in Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, 163.

  148. Knecht, “Chalk Plates.”

  149. For the accurate story of the founding of Evansville, see McCutchan, Bartelt and Lonnberg, Evansville at the Bend in the River, 10–12, and Morlock, Evansville Story, 13–17.

  150. Bergfelder and Street, Titanic in Myth and Memory, 2.

  151. Wachholz, Eastland Disaster, 7.

  152. “Right in the Heart of a Great City,” Evansville Courier.

  153. Fallows, Chicago’s Awful Theater Horror, 33; O’Donnell, Ship Ablaze; Renaud, Into the Mist.

  154. United States Department of Labor, “U.S. Department of Labor—History.”

  155. Von Drehle, Triangle, 3.

  156. “When Building Ordinances Are Not Enforced,” Evansville Courier.

  157. “It Should Be a Simple Matter to Find Those Who Are Really Responsible,” Evansville Courier.

  158. Examples include the cartoons for Memorial Day in 1929, 1942, 1947 and 1948.

  159. Blatt, Sons of Men.

  160. “James Montgomery Flagg,” Evansville Courier.

  161. “Throng Honors Soldier Hero,” Evansville Courier.

  162. “To Open Gresham Memorial Sunday,” Evansville Courier.

  163. “Plaza Shrine Proposed for Gresham,” Evansville Courier.

  164. “Bridge Open to Free Traffic Today as Celebration Starts,” Evansville Press; “Public Views, Speakers Laud New Terminal,” Evansville Journal.

  165. Welky, Thousand-Year Flood, xi; Casto, Great Ohio River Flood of 1937, 7.

  166. “When Disaster Strikes—Life Came to Halt as 1937 Flood Hit Region,” Evansville Courier and Press.

  167. McCutchan, Bartelt and Lonnberg, Evansville at the Bend in the River, 71.

  168. “Thousands Watch Autogiro Flights,” Evansville Press.

  169. “Historical Sketch of the Courier and other Evansville Newspapers,” Evansville Courier.

  170. “New High Speed Printing Machine of the Latest Pattern is Another Milestone in Press Growth,” Evansville Press.

  171. Okrent, Last Call, ix.

  172. Behr, Prohibition, 2.

  173. Hoffman, Scarface Al, 24.

  174. Blocker, Fahey, and Tyrrell, Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History, 440.

  175. McNeese, Great Depression, 64.

  176. McElvaine, Great Depression, 160.

  177. Ward, Brough and Arnold, Historical Dictionary, 147.

  178. Wilson, U.S. Justice System, 946.

  CHAPTER 5

  179. Zeiler, Annihilation, 412.

  180. What America Thinks, 92, 150, 246, 712, 718. He was, of course, well aware of the gathering war clouds long before Pearl Harbor—five of his cartoons are included in a collection of American editorials and cartoons published in 1941, featuring cartoons from 1938 to 1941.

  181. Zeman, Heckling Hitler, 98–99.

  182. Benson, Illingworth, 51. In an interesting mirror to Knecht’s cartoon, this moment was memorably represented by the British cartoonist Leslie Illingworth on June 23, 1941, as Hitler stabbing Stalin in the back while in the act of hugging him.

  183. Herf, Jewish Enemy, 252. According to Jeffrey Herf, “Even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 percent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front.”

  184. James, Picture This, 69.

  185. Clark, “‘You Are Here,’” 578.

  186. Roeder, Censored War, 13–14;

  187. Dower, Cultures of War, 214.

  188. “Three Americans,” Life.

  189. Brookes, “‘Everything in the Garden is Lovely,’” 35; Douglas, World War, 247. It is worth noting that Sidney Strube, “arguably Britain’s most widely known cartoonist,” drew a cartoon in the Daily Express on April 30, 1945, showing Mein Kampf being crushed by an Allied boot.

  190. Yoe, Great Anti-War Cartoons, 116.

  191. “One Hope,” Evansville Courier.

  192. Jansohn, President Truman and (the Challenge of) the Potsdam Conference 1945, 1.

  193. Wathen, “Evansville Needs Grand Reminder of Its Efforts During War,” Evansville Courier; see also Bigham, Evansville; Kellar and Kellar, Evansville Shipyard; Gourley, Shipyard Work Force; Morgan, Home Front Heroes; and Morgan, Home Front Warriors.

  194. All these letters are in the University of Evansville Archives.

  195. Igleheart to Knecht, June 8, 1944; “Local Women Producing Supplies for Hospitals,” Evansville Courier. As early as November 1942, Mrs Igleheart had been calling for hundreds of extra volunteers. See also Harris, “Rolling Bandages and Building Thunderbolts.”

  196. Schaeffer to Knecht, May 23, 1945.

  197. His invitation and platform ticket stub are both in the University of Evansville Archives.

  198. MacLeod, Evansville in World War II, 41; LST 325.

  199. For Indiana’s war effort, see Max Cavnes’s magisterial work: Cavnes, Hoosier Community at War.

  200. MacLeod, Evansville in World War II, 70; Gabin, “Women Defense Workers in World War II,” 109, 117.

  201. McWhirter to Harrison, June 1942.

  202. Karsten, Encyclopedia of War & American Society, 668. “Slogans such as ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ became part of everyday language” during the war.

  203. Buell, and Maus, “Is the Pen Mightier Than the Word?,” 847. “As long as editorial cartoonists have caricatured politicians, politicians have feared for their public images.”

  CHAPTER 6

  204. Ensley, The World of Karl Kae Knecht, 25.

  205. Bigham, We Ask Only a Fair Trial; Madison, Lynching in the Heartland.

  206. Martin, Indiana, an Interpretation, 184; Moore, Citizen Klansmen, 14; Tucker, Notre Dame vs. the Klan, 73–74. For a brilliant summary of the Klan in Indiana in the 1920s, see Madison, Hoosiers, 242–53.

  207. “Ku Klux Klan, Flaunting ‘White Supremacy’ Banner, Reborn in Georgia Ceremony,” Evansville Press.

  208. Ryan and Schlup, Historical Dictionary of the 1940s, 370.

  209. Conlin, American Past, 725.

  210. Morris, 1948, 180–97.

  211. Drawn on December 4, 1947.

  212. “Reds Sweep Within 70 Miles of Pusan,” Evansville Courier.

  213. “Truman Advisors Favor Building Hydrogen Bomb,” Evansville Courier; “Speed on H-Bomb Asked by Truman,” ibid. Truman would make the announcement that the hydrogen bomb would indeed get built on January 31.

  214. “World Eyes Moscow,” Evansville Courier.

  215. “Local GOP Ready for Nixon Visit,” Evansville Courier.

  216. “Second Thoughts,” Evansville Courier.

  CONCLUSION

  217. “Knecht Services Set for Today,” Evansville Courier.

  218. “Cartoons by Knecht Express our Eulogy,” Evansville Courier.

  219. “Around Town,” Evansville Press.

  220. Enlow to Knecht, May 31, 1960.

  221. Palmer to Knecht, June 4, 1960; “From My Tower,” Evansville Courier.

  222. “Front Row Center,” Evansville Courier.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  Behr, Edward. Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996.

  Benedict, G.R., to Don Scism, October 17, 1952. University of Evansville Archives.

  Benson, Tim. “The Greatest Political Cartoon of All Time?” History Today 55, no. 3 (March 2005), 20–23.

  Benson, Timothy S. Illingworth: Political Cartoons from the Daily Mail 1939–69. London: Political Cartoon Society, 2009.

  Bergfelder, Tim, and Sarah Street. The Titanic in Myth and Memory: Representations in Visual and Literary Culture
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  Berndt, Walter, et al. to Karl Kae Knecht, December 8, 1933. University of Evansville Archives.

  Bigham, Darrel E. Evansville: The World War II Years. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

  ———. We Ask Only a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

  Bigi, Alessandro, Kirk Plangger, Michelle Bonera and Colin L. Campbell. “When Satire Is Serious: How Political Cartoons Impact a Country’s Brand.” Journal of Public Affairs 11, no. 3 (2011): 148–55.

  Blatt, Heiman Kimmel. Sons of Men; Evansville’s War Record. Evansville, IN: Abe P. Madison, 1920.

  Blocker, Jack S., David M. Fahey and Ian R. Tyrrell. Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003.

  Bonilla, Xavier. “Drawing Fire: South American Cartoonists’ Battle with Censorship.” Index on Censorship 43, no. 4 (December 2014): 77–80.

  Boskin, Joseph. Sambo: The Rise & Demise of an American Jester. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  Bosse, Jeffrey A. When Everybody Boosts Everybody Wins: The Untold Story of Evansville Mayor Benjamin Bosse. Evansville, IN: M.T. Publishing Company, 2014.

  Brookes, Rod. “‘Everything in the Garden Is Lovely’: The Representation of National Identity in Sidney Strube’s Daily Express Cartoons in the 1930s.” Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 2 (1990): 31–43.

  ———. “The Little Man and the Slump: Sidney Strube’s Cartoons and the Politics of Unemployment 1929–1931.” Oxford Art Journal 8, no. 1 (1985): 49–61.

  Bryant, Mark. Illingworth’s War in Cartoons: One Hundred of His Greatest Drawings from the Daily Mail, 1939–1945. London: Grub Street, 2009.

  ———. The World’s Greatest War Cartoonists and Caricaturists, 1792–1945. London: Grub Street, 2011.

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  Buell, Emmett H., Jr., and Mike Maus. “Is the Pen Mightier Than the Word? Editorial Cartoons and 1988 Presidential Nominating Politics.” PS: Political Science and Politics 21, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 847–58.