"McCarthyism" Inspired Cartoons
Senator Joseph McCarthy made headline news after he proclaimed that he had a list of Communists in the State Department. Browse our selection of Herblock editorial cartoons and other graphic art that captures the sentiments of the time.
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"I have here ion my hand..." May 7, 1954.
Editorial cartoon showing Sen. Joseph McCarthy holding a "doctored photo" and a "faked letter," both burning, his fingers singed, which he claims are FBI documents during the Army-McCarthy hearings
Credit: 1954 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation -
You read books, eh?
Editorial cartoon showing members of "State and local 'Anti-subversive' Committees in the U.S." ransacking a school teacher's classroom, terrorizing her with questions about reading books, preparing to cut the Soviet Union out of a map of Europe, digging through the trash and finding something suspicious in a math problem, and noting, with displeasure, a portrait of Thomas Jefferson hanging on the wall.
Credit: 1949 Herblock Cartoons, © The Herb Block Foundation -
We now have new and important evidence.
Editorial cartoon showing two men carrying a section of a fence on which is written "Joe Zilch is a Red" into a Senate hearings chamber as "new and important evidence".
Credit: 1950 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation -
It's Okay — We're Hunting Communists.
Editorial cartoon showing an automobile, "Committee on Un-American Activities", recklessly driven by J. Parnell Thomas, as he runs over pedestrians on the sidewalk, the passenger in the car turns to reassure the injured that "it's okay [because] we're hunting communists." He is accompanied by fellow committee member Robert E. Stripling. This cartoon was published after a week of testimony by Hollywood screenwriters that included: Ring Lardner, Jr., Lester Cole, Bertolt Brecht, and John Howard Lawson.
Credit: 1947 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation -
Is This Tomorrow? America under Communism!
This 1947 pamphlet produced by the Catholic Catechetical Guild Educational Society was part of a "Red Scare" in the U.S. that raised fears about the horrors of a communist takeover.
Credit: Illustration by the catechetical guild, courtesy Wikimedia, PD. -
The Red Iceberg
Credit: "Traces of Mind Control" project, Bryn Mawr College. -
Fight for Freedom!
Credit: "Traces of Mind Control" project, Bryn Mawr College.
