Political MEMEs, like the editorial cartoons that came before them, reflect people’s thoughts and ideas about America, and the world, today. Usually they originate in the minds of young people but even adults are doing it these days.
MEMEs with political themes are modern hieroglyphs depicting events, ideas, politicians, and governments in action through the eyes and ideas of the MEMEmaker.
They might combine images of something like the attack on Congress with words about convictions, pardons, or assassination attempts on the President in order to convey what they think happened in a particular event.
Typically political MEMEs are meant to show one side of a political argument or another. But if you look at them closely, both sides can use them to celebrate their own story.
When I created the Student Political MEME Gallery back in 2018 it was a natural decision in a long line of decisions I made as an educator to implement technology in learning over the previous 32 years.
Whether I was using technology myself, or training other teachers and students on how to use technology, I wanted to enable people to better communicate what they learned and understood about a given subject.
As an educator I saw political MEMEs as another tool for students to use when communicating their ideas. I also wanted them to be thinking about important issues that impacted their lives.
I started by choosing a topic, a story, or a general idea from history, or a current event. We spent time in class learning something about the story by reading historical documents, images, and other media resources.
Political violence came up as a topic very quickly. But it wasn’t just the violence that occurred on January 6 that we were concerned about in studying American history or current events.
Political violence in the halls of Congress and communal buildings in downtown Washington D.C. became a reality long before any of us were on the planet.
In the long history of political violence in America, it was 1865 when:
The euphoria of Union victory came to a sudden halt on the night of April 14, 1865, when President Lincoln was shot while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre. As the president lay dying in a house across the street from the theater, Senator Charles Sumner appeared at his bedside. Keeping his deathbed vigil throughout the long night, the Massachusetts senator was one of the few present when Lincoln died on the morning of April 15.
“Mourn not the dead,” Sumner later wrote in his eulogy to Lincoln, “but rejoice in his life and example . . . . Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed.”
—The Death of President Abraham Lincoln (senate.gov)
The image of Lincoln’s assassination immediately comes to mind but we know it wasn’t an editorial cartoon. It was more like a drawing of a photograph had there been one taken at the moment of the shooting.
The Civil War was one of the most important moments in photographic history because it is the first time we have evidence of war in American photographs.
Susan Sontag once wrote that “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it.”
This image from the history of Lincoln’s assassination was drawn as a matter of fact and is meant to prove something about the assassination as if it were a photograph.
It was not like the 1770 editorial drawing and poem about the Boston Massacre.
That piece also looks like a drawing of a photograph of an event even though photography had yet to be invented.
The political commentary talks about the victims of the King’s soldiers’ muscats, and who instigated who in the street fight.
The people in the image were not the people who were actually there protesting that night but it was made to look like they were there. The King’s soldiers were depicted as firing in a planned position at orders of the Captain in charge which is disputable and accurate at the same time.
There were orders to fire, but they were delivered and executed amid chaos.
How history is depicted impacts what we know about the different people we study in history and what their story means to us today.
In fact, it turns out that Senator Sumner was a victim of political violence in the halls of Congress nine years before Lincoln’s assassination and long before the beginning of the Civil War.
If you know about this story then you will have seen this image which was created as an editorial cartoon and meant to tell the story of a horrible and violent attack of an United States Senator in the halls of Congress.
This drawing references the battle over whether Kansas should be allowed to ban slavery. People on both sides of the issue are depicted in this image and the editorial cartoon itself was published in Southern newspapers as proof that the South was right and in control of the debate one way or the other.
Today, you may also know about Charles Sumner from in a recent Congressional hearing for a White House cabinet nominee who said he thought caning was fine because it had been done before.
Maybe he thinks the latest assassination attempt is the perfect time to pull out that punishment again.
If you ask my students, they would tell you they see things differently and the same. Meaning, they understand their opponents stance on a topic very clearly and it’s easy to present the two sides using a MEME.
But America always gets fooled. Which brings me back to Senator Sumner.
If you look closely at the editorial cartoon you can see witnesses of the caning smiling as if they were enjoying the entire incident. These are the southern lawmakers and their “southern sympathizers.”
These are the same people who were happy, to see the editorial cartoon in their southern newspapers. These are the people who wanted to extend the 237 year life of slavery in America . . . forever.
Roughly seven generations later, slavery is gone, but not the one-sided punishment of political enemies.
Brooks admits in his testimony that he and he alone decided the crime and executed the punishment. The South Carolina Representative gave testimony as to why and how he attacked Sumner after the Senator gave a speech:
“Regarding the speech of Mr. Sumner as an atrocious libel on South Carolina, and a gross insult to my absent relative (Judge Butler), I determined, when it was delivered, to punish him for it. To-day I approached him, after the Senate adjourned, and said to him, Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech carefully, and with as much calmness as I could be expected to read such a speech. You have libeled my State and slandered my relation, who is aged and absent, and I feel it to be my duty to punish you for it; and with that I struck him a blow across the head with my cane, and repeated it until I was satisfied. No one interposed, and I desisted simply because I had punished him to my satisfaction.”
The Senate Select Committee investigating the incident eventually ruled that nothing should happen to Congressman Brooks because the rules didn’t allow it.
“The leading principle which appears to pervade all the proceedings between the two Houses of Parliament is, that there shall subsist a perfect equality with respect to each other; and that they shall be, in every respect, totally independent one of the other. From hence it is, that neither House can claim, much less exercise, any authority over a member of the other; . . . if punishment is necessary, must be determined upon and inflicted by them. Indeed, any other proceeding would soon introduce disorder and confusion . . .” (3 Hatsell, 67.)
There was no apology. Nobody told anyone not to beat someone with a cane again because they disagree about something.
These kinds of things always make me wonder why nobody ever suggests changing the rules?
Actually, one person at the time did.
Charles Sumner did.
In his ninety five page speech, Sumner explained both the reasons why slavery became such a problem in America, and the hope he had for it to finally end:
As every point in a wide-spread horizon radiates from a common centre, so everything said or done in this vast circle of Crime radiates from the One Idea that Kansas, at all hazards, must be made a slave State. In all the manifold wickednesses that have occurred, and in every successive invasion, this One Idea has been ever present, as the Satanic tempter—the motive power—the causing cause.
To accomplish this result, three things were attempted. First, by outrages of all kinds to drive the friends of Freedom already there out of the Territory; secondly, to deter others from coming; and, thirdly, to obtain the complete control of the Government. The process of driving out, and also of deterring, has failed. On the contrary, the friends of Freedom there became more fixed in their resolves to stay and fight the battle, which they had never sought, but from which they disdained to retreat; while the friends of Freedom elsewhere were more aroused to the duty of timely succors, by men and munitions of just self-defence.
- - - -
The contest, which, beginning in Kansas, has reached us, will soon be transferred to a broader state, where every citizen will be not only spectator, but actor; and to their judgement I confidently appeal To the People . . . I appeal, to vindicate the electoral franchise in Kansas. Let the ballot-box of the Union, with the multitudinous might, protect the ballot-box in that territory. Let the voters everywhere, while rejoicing in their own rights, help to guard the equal rights of distant fellow-citizens; that the shrines of popular institutions, now desecrated, may be sanctified anew; that the ballot-box, now plundered, may be restored; and that the cry, “I am an American citizen,” may not be sent forth in vain against outrage of every kind . . . in stern condemnation of the Crime which has been consummated on that beautiful soil; in rescue of fellow-citizens, now subjected to tyrannical Usurpation; in dutiful respect for the early Fathers, whose aspirations are now ignobly thwarted; in the name of the Constitution, which has been outraged—of the Laws trampled down—of Justice banished—of Humanity degraded—of Peace destroyed—of Freedom crushed to earth; and in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect Freedom, I make this last appeal.
— Speech by the Honorable Charles Sumner
United States Senate, 19th and 20th May, 1856
If this all sounds familiar to you today it’s not deja-vu. These words ring so true today it’s almost sad . . . if it weren’t also hopeful.
We’ve had a lot of disorder and confusion in America these past 10 years.
I’m hoping for the glass to be half full soon.
I’m hoping people will see how government is being dominated by a few people with radical ideas about how America should look and how it should be in the world . . . and want to make change.
We’ll need help. Democrats and Republicans are on the way down. Membership in their movements are tenuous from election to election and their overall numbers are dropping which is primarily why we have such disarray in government.
Leadership is necessary and I don’t see anyone taking that role at this time.
And MEMEs should only be a starting point for discussion and debate because life is not a pendulum. Our world shouldn’t be run back and forth like one.
We have to move ahead and ahead and ahead.
Sliding back is too easy and the results are always terrible.
It’s time to restore Justice, Humanity, Peace, and Freedom for all.
Thanks for reading today!
When editorial cartoons turned into political MEMEs they changed the world — Pt. 1
When editorial cartoons turned into political MEMEs they changed the world — Pt. 2
When editorial cartoons turned into political MEMEs they changed the world — Pt. 3
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