Civil Rights

During the 1950s and 1960s, no domestic issue proved more contentious and challenging in America than the advancement of civil rights. The struggle to secure voting rights, equal protection under the law, equal employment opportunities, integration in education, and fair housing faced formidable opposition from white people in the era of Jim Crow and segregation. Conservative white southern governors and senators—Dixiecrats— vigorously blocked efforts to advance and enact civil rights legislation. The Ku Klux Klan and White Citizen’s Councils stoked racism and violence against freedom riders and voting rights activists. Jerry Doyle’s editorial cartoons were firmly in the pro-civil rights camp, and he documented many of the pivotal moments of the movement and its leaders, especially Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. However, as illustrated in the “Peas in a Pod” cartoon below, he equated prominent Black leaders such as H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, who eventually came to believe that violent resistance was justified in the face of unrelenting and systemic racism in America, with the Ku Klux Klan and white “bigots” who committed racist violence.