Benefits of the Unbeneficial

My cartoon is split into two sections. The first column is drawings that represent a black man on his journey through life during the Reconstruction era. When slaves are given the right to, he learns to read and is amazed by it, he’s learning new things. The hate group against blacks at the time called the KKK, Klu Klux Klan, notices this and is infuriated so they burn the book. They did this a lot back during that era and many more graphic and violent things that I decided not to show in that specific panel. This is important because slaves obviously did benefit from the Reconstruction era and the laws passed along with it. However, whenever an eager black wanted to do something more for themselves or achieve something in their new way of life, there would always be a backfire and racial hate that came along with their success. So even though they were technically and legally “free” the treatment they were given was just how it was when they were enslaved. You were one of the lucky ones if you were black during that time and succeed financially and socially amongst the whites in life. But this was rare, if not impossible.

In the first panel in the second column there is a drawing of the same black man but now he is a doctor, most of you probably think that this wasn't possible, but the patients would see him in the confines of his own home to receive treatment. When someone tipped the KKK about Dr. Johnson’s recent activities they went straight to his home, forcibly brought him to the woods and lynched him. This form of killing was quite common back then among the KKK, they would usually gather many black men and have a group lynching inviting the townspeople to watch, like a movie. They would all gather together in the woods and laugh and ridicule the murdered. These acts were cruel, inhuman and immoral.

So overall, it shows the racial discrimination and immoral acts brought upon blacks in America. It matters for us to study these topics so history won’t repeat itself and for everyone to be educated on the struggle this countries ancestors had to endure to give us freedom and the life we live today. Freedom, a right that every human that ever lived should have gotten.