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Photo of Mixed Race Sociability in Jim Crow Washington, DC, 1944

Black and white photo of a convivial scene. More details in caption.

Pete Seeger at twenty-five entertaining federal workers, sailors, and soldiers with a banjo and song at the opening of the Labor Canteen in Washington, DC, on February 13, 1944. This unsegregated place in a Jim Crow city was sponsored by the Federal Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.1 Note First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt enjoying herself in the mixed race and sex audience. On the wall behind the merrymakers are sketches of a hapless character undergoing physical training, perhaps Private Snafu.

Source: Office of War Information, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017864322/

  1. For further details about the Labor Canteen, see the long caption for Washington Area Spark, “Social equality at the Labor Canteen,” https://www.flickr.com/photos/washington_area_spark/54266105006/. ↩︎

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The one who deals the blow forgets.
The one who carries the scar remembers.
– Haitian proverb*

* Quoted in Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism (St: Martin’s, 2022), front matter.

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What’s the U.S. version of “banana republic”? “Orange republic”?

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World War Two Poster Marking the Dignity and Humanity of Black Women on the Home Front

Poster. The women described in the detailed caption below are separated into different quadrants with the help of a big 'V', which itself is underlined by the text 'for victory'.

The American Front for Victory – This poster from World War Two operates on two levels. First, it emphasizes the contribution of “The American Front” to the victory for which the nation was fighting. American front because this was about the home front, the people, many of them women, contributing to victory in industry, in agriculture, through service, and with their savings. Second, the name makes an important statement about the women it pictures working. They are Black. In large parts of the country, racist Americans cast the fitness of Black people as American citizens in doubt, to say nothing of questioning their very humanity.1 Here, by contrast, four Black women are depicted doing dignified work for the national cause.

Moving clockwise from the top, one woman, wearing some kind of civilian uniform, is holding a bucket marked “save” and is participating in either the sale or purchase of “Defense Bonds”; another is working a potato field with the words “strong bodies” underneath; there is a woman in a nurse’s uniform above the label “volunteer service”; and a woman can be seen working on an airplane, perhaps installing its propeller. This is a poster proclaiming the importance of the home front and the dignity and honor of the Black women fighting on it.

Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_061.

  1. See a related poster for American men on this blog, one of them Black, captioned “Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!" ↩︎

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Yellow poster with brown and a bit of blue. The heads of three Black men are sketched. One is wearing a World War One helmet, one is wearing pilots headgear, and the other appears to be civilian.

Books Are Weapons – World War Two poster by NYC WPA War Services promoting knowledge about Black history and culture, the war's colonial entanglements in Africa, and the role of Black Americans in national defense. The books referenced were housed in the New York Public Library's renowned Schomburg Collection.

Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5211531.

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Thick book: A Companion to Women's Military History, ed. Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining
This is not a book I would have considered controversial even two weeks ago. Now I'm not so sure. Imagine having it on your desk in the Pentagon when the gender police come in. Women as part of military history despite Orange Oaf's decrees!

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I don’t get it. With the Abraham Accords from last time and now the changed situation in Lebanon and Syria, His Royal Orangliness might have been uniquely poised to obtain a grand bargain for Israel and the region. Instead everything he says and does worsens the situation. Have they no imagination?

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Black and white print from engraving: Black men seated on cases, boxes, or crates and playing their instruments. Two tubas, two trombones, one or two saxophones and a drum are in evidence. The drummer's chest and the surface of his drum form the focal point. It is probably night. The image is dark, with light hitting only part of them from the right.

“WPA Rhythm Band” by Elisabeth Olds, 1937. I love how dynamic this image is, like her “Harlem WPA Street Dance” from the same year.

Signed and dated print, Federal Art Project, NYC WPA, via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5180673.

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Xi Jinping must be feeling really good. Putin’s worn down his army in a bid to end Ukrainian state- and nationhood. Felonious Husk is gutting the U.S. federal government from within, snuffing out crucial expertise. And Hegseth is leading the Pentagon—enough said.

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Artist's black, white, and grey image of men and women dancing in the street. It might be summer because the people are well dressed, but the men do not have suit jackets on.

“Harlem WPA Street Dance” by Elisabeth Olds, 1937. Signed and dated print, Federal Art Project, NYC WPA, via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5180674.

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Not a bad drive, but still something of a forced march from the White Mountains to the great city that hosts the institutions under attack by Felonious Husk and his young fascists. Am finally lying in bed, but my body still thinks it’s in a moving vehicle.

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Ethnic cleansing as daring do—if Orange Donald’s own country doesn’t move to try him and his collaborators in the end, other countries will.

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King Donald as nation builder in the Middle East. It’ll be a snap with the U.S. armed forces at his command. He just needs a few more weeks to undermine everything that once made America a great power.

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This will not end well for Felonious Husk. I just wish he wasn’t so intent on taking the rest of us with him.

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Felonious Musk
is having a ball,
while Donald Dingus
performs for us all.

Presidenting is
the biggliest shit.
Don’t steal my show
or you’ll have to go.

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Color photograph. Top half of African American boy in a buttoned up shirt with a collar and light brown corduroy overalls. He's wearing a black hat with a brim. He's facing the camera, the sun lighting most of him.

Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration, 1942 or 1943.

Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017877922/.

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The fighting spirit and actions announced here are a breath of fresh air: “Congressional Democrats on Trump Admin. Closing USAID HQ”.

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A black man's left forearm and fist and a white man's left forearm and fist shown striking a big swaztika. The black man has a broken chain dangling from his wrist. The text reads, 'Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!'

Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis, not bondage!

World War Two poster – The word "bonds" can work three ways here: the bonds or chains pictured here as broken, the bonds that unite us, and U.S. war bonds. The second of these offers the most powerful contrast to "bondage."

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_065.

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Democratic U.S. allies are going to need to find ways to stand up to the United States, whose government is being captured by Rocket Man, before this person starts leveraging U.S. foreign policy for his own ends. Orange Oaf’s capricious nature might just be the least of their problems.