| Abstract:
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The
Daily Worker and
Daily World Cartoon Collection contains a wide range of cartoons and sketches published and submitted
for publication to the official organ of the Communist Party of the United States
of America (CPUSA), the
Daily Worker (and its various later forms). The
Daily Worker's editorial positions reflected the policies of the CPUSA. The paper also attempted
to speak to the broad left-wing community in the United States that included labor,
civil rights, and peace activists, with stories covering a wide range of events, organizations
and individuals in the United States and around the world. As a daily newspaper, it
covered the major stories of the twentieth century. However, the paper always placed
an emphasis on radical social movements, social and economic conditions particularly
in working class and minority communities, poverty, labor struggles, racial discrimination,
right wing extremism with an emphasis on fascist and Nazi movements, and of course
the Soviet Union and the world-wide Communist movement. The paper has had a succession
of names and has been published in varying frequences between daily to weekly over
the course of its existence. In 2010 it ceased print publication and became an electronic,
online-only, weekly publication titled the
People's World. A number of different artists are represented in the collection, including: Fred
Ellis, Eric (James Erickson), Hugo Gellert, Norman Goldberg, Ollie Harrington, Hal
Kinkaid, Robert Minor, and Joseph Seymour, among numerous others. A large portion
of the cartoons in the collection are original, signed drawings, but also present
are newsprint copies and pre-press prints. The material in the collection ranges in
date from the late 1920s up through the 2002, though is predominantly from the 1940s-1980s.
The topics covered by the cartoons are as diverse as was the coverage of the
Daily Worker. Focusing heavily on capitalism, civil rights, civil liberties, labor, and the Vietnam
War, as well as caricatures of Presidents and other influential politicians, the cartoons
provide a narrative for the major events of the 20th century, particularly those that
effected the left-wing community in the US.
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