It’s just shocking to see the blatant racism of the era. Here’s a comic strip, printed in The Sunday Star on January 5th, 1908. The strip is called Sambo and His Funny Noises.
The Shocking Racism of a 1908 Comic Strip in The Sunday Star
4 thoughts on “The Shocking Racism of a 1908 Comic Strip in The Sunday Star”
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Seems to put him in a class above the white hooligans.
Please… it doesn’t makes this picaninny racial caricature any less racist…
This is interesting. Obviously the physical appearance of Sambo is an insensitive caricature of black people, but the story surprised me. The reader is clearly meant to read the two white boys as the villains in this, and to root for Sambo to get back at them, which he does through his ingenuity. That storyline – clever black kid trumps dumb, mean white kids – is probably among the more progressive ones from that era.
I have a copy of the dec 26, 1908 funny pages in color of Sambo and his Funny Noises.