Schomburg's KKK robe covers 1 1

[N e r V]

6 minutes ago, atomised said:

Was Schomburg Jewish? His bio in the Secret History of Marvel Comics by Blake Bell states he was not.

Antonio Alejandro "Alex" Schomburg was born May 10, 1905 in Puerto Rico. His father, Guillermo Schomburg, was born in 1845 in Puerto Rico of German ancestry. His mother, Francisca Rosa, was born in 1875 in Puerto Rico. His parents had seven children, one daughter and six sons, of which was the youngest. The fourth-born son, August Schomburg, also became a pulp artist. The father was a civil engineer and land surveyor.

[walclark]

I do think this poses a number of interesting questions.  Why did Schomburg draw an association between the Nazis and the Klan?  Why did he use the hooded figures, both during the war and after, so frequently?  Considering his prodigious output, did he find it easier and faster to draw hooded figures and not have to draw facial features?  An interesting mystery

Another attributed to Schomburg.

[Pat Calhoun]

[N e r V]

34 minutes ago, walclark said:

I do think this poses a number of interesting questions.  Why did Schomburg draw an association between the Nazis and the Klan?  Why did he use the hooded figures, both during the war and after, so frequently?  Considering his prodigious output, did he find it easier and faster to draw hooded figures and not have to draw facial features?  An interesting mystery

Another attributed to Schomburg.

 Some history:

 

For the Nazis, the South represented a sociopolitical structure that had successfully maintained the separation between the races for centuries. In the 1930s, Nazi publications, which were anti-black in addition to being anti-Semitic, praised the “southern way,” pointing out that many Americans were also working against “racial bastardization,” evident from, among other things, the 30 or so U.S. states that had legal restrictions on interracial marriage. Hitler himself greatly admired America’s “wholesome aversion for the Negroes and the colored races in general” and warned of German culture being “negrified.”

 

The public execution of undesirable minorities — in the form of lynchings — was still prevalent in Southern states at the time. In fact, as Cambridge University political scientist David Runciman observes in the London Review of Books, “what happened in the South was in the early 1930s more overt and more bestial than anything taking place in Germany, where state-sanctioned murder was treated as an unpleasant necessity rather than a public festival.”

While the South’s transgressions may not have risen to the level of genocide, the threat of such mass killing was ever present in its history, even after the Civil War. James K. Vardaman, elected governor of Mississippi in 1903, once proclaimed that should it become necessary to maintain white supremacy, “every Negro in the state will be lynched.”

 

 

The second wave of the KKK was at it's peak by the 1920's but still going on into the 1940's before breaking into independent groups. I'm not sure most Americans today understand how widespread it was at one time.

[Cat-Man_America]

Aaaargh, I've been hoodwinked by West, ...just not Timely enough to get these posted first.  

[vaillant]

If you want to portray americans as a whole as evil in comics propaganda, in the 1940s you gotta go with the KKK:

[vaillant]

8 hours ago, N e r V said:

The public execution of undesirable minorities — in the form of lynchings — was still prevalent in Southern states at the time. In fact, as Cambridge University political scientist David Runciman observes in the London Review of Books, “what happened in the South was in the early 1930s more overt and more bestial than anything taking place in Germany, where state-sanctioned murder was treated as an unpleasant necessity rather than a public festival.”

While the South’s transgressions may not have risen to the level of genocide, the threat of such mass killing was ever present in its history, even after the Civil War. James K. Vardaman, elected governor of Mississippi in 1903, once proclaimed that should it become necessary to maintain white supremacy, “every Negro in the state will be lynched.”

 

The second wave of the KKK was at it's peak by the 1920's but still going on into the 1940's before breaking into independent groups. I'm not sure most Americans today understand how widespread it was at one time.

And to think it all began as some students goliardery… 

[Robot Man]

3 hours ago, vaillant said:

If you want to portray americans as a whole as evil in comics propaganda, in the 1940s you gotta go with the KKK:

Wow Claudio, that's wild and a little scarey...

[vaillant]

18 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

Wow Claudio, that's wild and a little scarey...

That’s what occupied France offered to young readers, after most of the comics publications stopped their publication after 1940.
This and I hope more in my "WW2 Worldwide" thread, hopefully coming (sooner or later).

[sfcityduck]

I assumed Schomburg was Jewish because he was featured in the Jewish Museum's "Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics" exhibit.   After some quick research in response to the above posts, I've now read that Schomburg is sometimes a German-Jewish surname and I've read some assertions by various sources that Schomburg was Jewish -- but I do not know what those assertions are based on.  The fact he was raised in Puerto Rico is not determinative of anything because Jews immigrated everywhere (my college girlfriend was Jewish and her family was from Oaxaca).  The best way to find out would be to ask his kids. 

[N e r V]

I got to meet him while he was alive long ago.

 I thought he looked Spanish at the time and after looking at pictures I'd have guessed the same again.

Great artist either way.

[adamstrange]

Alex's father was a German emigre and his mother was a Puerto Rican native.  His mother died when Alex was 6 and his father when he was 7. 

IIRC, the father was Jewish but Alex and his siblings were Roman Catholics.

[comicjack]

13 hours ago, vaillant said:

If you want to portray americans as a whole as evil in comics propaganda, in the 1940s you gotta go with the KKK:

Pretty cool 

[vaillant]

9 hours ago, adamstrange said:

Alex's father was a German emigre and his mother was a Puerto Rican native.  His mother died when Alex was 6 and his father when he was 7. 

IIRC, the father was Jewish but Alex and his siblings were Roman Catholics.

Thanks. As far as this topic girs, "Jewish", however, was considered in cultural terms. Surely that background gave him a slightly wider perspective, compared to the other young artists and writers of the time.

[walclark]

Regardless of his religious affiliation, I think the OP's original question is interesting.  Of all the GA artists, many of whom worked at the same publishers as Schomburg, why was he seemingly the only one (with the exception of the Blue Beetle I posted) that depicted Nazis in hoods and robes?  We all know that emulation was commonplace, but no one else jumped on the bandwagon.

[sfcityduck]

1 hour ago, walclark said:

Regardless of his religious affiliation, I think the OP's original question is interesting.  Of all the GA artists, many of whom worked at the same publishers as Schomburg, why was he seemingly the only one (with the exception of the Blue Beetle I posted) that depicted Nazis in hoods and robes?  We all know that emulation was commonplace, but no one else jumped on the bandwagon.

Given the strong revival of the KKK in the 20s and 30s,

I view it as a pretty strong social statement for Schomburg to have repeatedly clothed his villains, especially Nazi villains, in KKK robes.  And I don't think there's any doubt, given the symbols he frequently put on those robes, that they were KKK robes:

I'm not at all shocked that this didn't catch on with other artists.  The publishers were terrified of offending whites in the South. 

(Maybe if I'm more generous, I should say that the publishers were terrified of offending potential customers.  After all, Fawcett did dump a racist character when the NAACP threatened a boycott.)

It was a very political act on Schomburg's part to use this imagery.  As a person of hispanic and Jewish ancestry, though, it is understandable why he did so.

 

[vaillant]

5 hours ago, walclark said:

Regardless of his religious affiliation, I think the OP's original question is interesting.  Of all the GA artists, many of whom worked at the same publishers as Schomburg, why was he seemingly the only one (with the exception of the Blue Beetle I posted) that depicted Nazis in hoods and robes?  We all know that emulation was commonplace, but no one else jumped on the bandwagon.

I would say that he was not depicting just "nazi" hooded figures, but hooded figures in general.
Also, the fact that he has such a rich cultural heritage is what makes it fascinating, as I said. And if you are jewish, faith is so intertwined with heritage and culture that is not an "affiliation".
Well, even if you are catholic is not an "affiliation", but the very source of your own inner life, and universal in its scope and longing.

[vaillant]

3 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

It was a very political act on Schomburg's part to use this imagery.  As a person of hispanic and Jewish ancestry, though, it is understandable why he did so.

What do you mean by "very political"?

[walclark]

25 minutes ago, vaillant said:

I would say that he was not depicting just "nazi" hooded figures, but hooded figures in general.
Also, the fact that he has such a rich cultural heritage is what makes it fascinating, as I said. And if you are jewish, faith is so intertwined with heritage and culture that is not an "affiliation".
Well, even if you are catholic is not an "affiliation", but the very source of your own inner life, and universal in its scope and longing.

Apologies if my meaning wasn't clear.  I wasn't using the term "affiliation" in the way that someone might say they are affiliated with a club or organization.  I was using it to refer to the religious denomination.

[vaillant]

11 minutes ago, walclark said:

Apologies if my meaning wasn't clear.  I wasn't using the term "affiliation" in the way that someone might say they are affiliated with a club or organization.  I was using it to refer to the religious denomination.

Thanks for the explanation: across languages it’s very easy to misunderstand, especially between english and italian whose qualities (and limits) as languages are almost opposite.
What I implied is that is extremely fascinating that Schomburg was:

– half european and half portorican;
– for the european part of german heritage;
– half-jewish by heritage/faith/culture;
– catholic, I suppose due to his mother's family? or maybe the father was german, jewish by heritage AND catholic?

This makes for a very rich heritage: my impression is that the hooded figures could have evoked BOTH the evil of the KKK and of nationalsocialism (and their illusions) and some european medieval imagery, tradition et al. Jack Kirby told me that most of his imaginary came from the tales his old aunts told him when he was a kid.