"Ethiopia to Uncle Sam"
This drawing in the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> shows Uncle Sam standing impotently before a robed figure, Ethiopia, as she gestures toward the shooting of innocent African American men and women, and a burning church. “See how my people are murdered, maltreated and outraged in the South,” Ethiopia says, “and you, with a great army and navy, are taking no measures to prevent it.” Ethiopia was a recurring figure in <em>Freeman</em> iconography, who represented strong advocacy of equal protection and due process.
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2013-07-09 15:43:28
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Edward E. Cooper
Edward E. Cooper was born in Florida in 1859. He founded short-lived <em>Colored World</em> in Indianapolis in 1878, which was later revived as the Indianapolis <em>World</em>. He founded the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> in July 1888 as a politically independent, national newspaper. Within a few months, he expanded and changed the paper's format, making the <em>Freeman</em> the nation's first African American illustrated newspaper. The paper’s satirical cartoons were so pointed that they sometimes drew criticism from the African American community. In 1893, Cooper left as <em>Freeman </em>editor to found the <em>Colored American</em> in Washington, DC.
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2013-11-05 13:31:13
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Indianapolis Freeman
The Indianapolis<em> Freeman </em>was a weekly newspaper first published in 1888 by editor <a title="Edward E. Cooper" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/200">Edward E. Cooper</a>. As the nation’s first illustrated African American newspaper, it was considered by the Indianapolis <em>Journal </em>to be the “best paper published in the interests of colored people.” Under Cooper’s editorship, the paper was a Democratic-leaning, but politically independent national press, sometimes referred to as the “Colored’s <em>Harper’s Weekly</em>.” In 1892, Cooper sold the press to <a title="George L. Knox" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/198">George L. Knox</a>, who transformed it into a pro-Republican paper, which fully supported Booker T. Washington's philosophy of accommodation.
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2013-11-06 13:51:28
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George L. Knox
<p>George L. Knox purchased the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> from <a title="Edward E. Cooper" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/200">Edward E. Cooper</a> in 1892 and transformed the newspaper from a Democratic-leaning, independent paper into a loyal Republican Party press. Knox was well connected with the state party leadership, and under his editorship the paper fully supported Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of accommodation.</p>
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2013-11-07 14:51:14
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Moses L. Tucker
<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;">Moses L. Tucker was an engraver, illustrator and caricaturist from Atlanta, Georgia. Little is known of his history, but in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he produced a range of satirical cartoons for the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a>. The editor, <a title="Edward E. Cooper" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/200">Edward E Cooper</a>, introduced Tucker in 1889 as an expert in lampooning African Americans, with prior experience with an humorous newspaper in Atlanta called the Georgia <em>Cracker</em>. <em>Freeman </em>readers appreciated Tucker's civil rights drawings but roundly critiqued his more negative portrayals of rural African Americans.</span>
owproject
2013-11-09 18:44:01
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Henry J. Lewis
<p><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;" data-mce-mark="1">Henry J. Lewis was born in slavery in Mississippi, sometime in the late 1830s (the exact year of his birth is unknown). He was severely burned as a child, which left him blind in one eye and crippled in his left hand. He lived much of his life in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas. In the 1870s he produced some engravings for </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;">Harper’s Weekly</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;" data-mce-mark="1">, and in the early 1880s worked as a sketch artist for the Smithsonian’s “Mound Survey” of pre-historic Native American sites in Arkansas and elsewhere. His cartoons in the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199">Indianapolis </a></span><a style="font-size: 10px;" title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;">Freeman</em></a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5;" data-mce-mark="1"> in 1889 focused on themes of economic, social and political rights for African Americans. He died in April 1891.</span></p>
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2013-11-09 18:53:34
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