CSotD: April 4, 1968
Skip to comments
To begin with, it didn't become the biggest story of the week until late in the day on April 4. Prior to that, the Democratic Presidential Race topped the news.
This insightful Jules Fieffer cartoon came out a week before a disheartened LBJ went on national TV March 31 to announce a bombing halt and his intention not to seek a second full term as president.
Within the black community, the strike and riots in Memphis were front-page news, but hardly the only topic covered by the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly whose April 6 issue went to press after LBJ's announcement but before the April 4 assassination.
Even mainstream dailies saw a gap between the assassination and the point at which their cartoon commentary caught up, given that many received editorial cartoons by mail and many also assembled their editorial pages a day or so in advance.
LBJ's announcement took center stage for several days into April:
(Herblock was delighted)
(Mauldin took a less celebratory view)
There was also the response of Hanoi, agreeing to peace talks, though the North Vietnamese had always predicated such talks on a bombing halt.
Nonetheless, Herblock celebrated the offer.
As did Lou Grant
And Don Hesse was somewhat more cynical about the offer.
While Pat Oliphant was his usual acerbic, dubious but realistic self.
And LBJ's decision not to run, which was based in part on his overall discouragement but hardly isolated from the success of Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy in the primaries, threw the Democratic process into a maelstrom, as Reg Manning noted.
Bobby had held back until he saw McCarthy's success, at which point, as Alfred Buescher suggests, he became more aggressive in his campaigning. RFK's greater electability threw up something of a divide within antiwar ranks and, later in the spring as he won more primaries, there was even talk of cancelling the demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, until, as Abbie Hoffman so delicately explained, "Sirhan Sirhan stepped up and it was a whole new ballgame."
Hubert Humphrey was the old-line Democratic favorite, but the Happy Warrior, as shown in this Lou Grant panel, had been, indeed, holding the bag for Lyndon's war policies, and his once-welcome liberalism was no longer trusted, particularly by the war-weary who were gaining ascendancy both in the Democratic Party and around the nation.
Here, from that week, is why it mattered:
And then, 50 years ago tonight, it didn't seem to matter at all.
Herblock didn't particularly distinguish himself with his initial response.
But Mauldin managed a more iconic piece, connecting this act to our previous experience of horror.
A few days later, Herblock redeemed that weak first cartoon, making a pointed connection between the two murders.
But sorrow was more the typical take, and this sentimental piece by Hugh Haynie got play in several papers.
Prior to the murder, the Courier's Sam Milai had chided Congress for its inaction on the stalled civil rights report Herblock referenced in his initial cartoon. Congress now responded to King's death with the long-promised legislation.
Pat Oliphant was not impressed.
However, a major crisis quickly emerged as cities around the nation erupted in furious, destructive rioting. Paul Conrad responded with an appeal to King's philosophy, though it's doubtful that anyone who needed to see it would have.
Herblock was more in keeping with the general response, blaming both the murderer and the rioters.
It was an approach Milai echoed in the Courier, though with a significant element of "We're better than this" in his depiction.
In the same issue, he ran this cartoon, suggesting a reaction more of sorrow than of anger.
Such sympathy was missing from a lot of coverage in the mainstream press, which tended, as in this Herblock piece, to make a closer connection between the white supremacy doctrine of George Wallace and the furious militancy of Stokely Carmichael.
Maudin's commentary on the riots was more resigned and, like Milai's, sorrowful, though historic accuracy should note that the damage was not confined entirely to home neighborhoods.
The expression that "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged" has always reminded me of a noted campus liberal I knew whose politics swung 180 degrees when his family's home was burned in the riots, and I'm quite sure he didn't grow up in the Get-Toe.
As with a lot that happened that week, it was possible to sympathize with his point of view without feeling compelled to admire it.
In the end, it was hardly surprising that it was Bill Mauldin who capped this week of horror with the cartoon that would live on, perhaps as a symbol not of who we were, but who we wished we could be.
Still wishin'.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments 3
Comments are closed.