Lies My Teacher Told Me

These cartoons by Thomas Nast mirror the revival of racism in the North. Left,
And Not This Man? from Harper’s Weekly, August 5, 1865, provides evidence
of Nast’s idealism in the early days after the Civil War. Nine years later, as
Reconstruction was beginning to wind down, Nast’s images of African
Americans reflected the increasing racism of the times. Opposite is Colored
Rule in a Reconstructed (?) State, from the same journal, March 14, 1874.
Such idiotic legislators could obviously be discounted as the white North
contemplated giving up on black civil rights.