Weaving in Traffic

Henry David Thoreau was a poet, essayist, and naturalist. He spent a night in jail for not paying his poll-tax, but made the act a medium for protesting both the United States’ war in Mexico and slavery. Mr. Thoreau is credited for inventing the concept of civil disobedience (which he writes about in his essay of the same name). As for Mr. Thoreau’s influences, one of the sources of his ideas is the Hindu classic, the Bhagavadgita, (Sanskrit for “Song of the Lord”).

In the beginning of the 20th century, we find Mohandas K. Gandhi exploring ways of bringing about social change through nonviolent resistance. Gandhi claimed that he first got the idea for organizing mass civil disobedience by reading Thoreau’s essay. Gandhi’s brilliance was his ability to create techniques for applying Thoreau’s theory; Gandhian nonviolent resistance took shape as strikes, boycotts, and protest marches.

Twenty years after Gandhi’s death, Martin Luther King, Jr. was listening to a speech by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, the president of Howard University, describing Gandhi’s life and teachings. King was so impressed that he immediately read as much as he could about Gandhi and through him discovered the tools that he would use in helping to lead the US Civil Rights Movement.

And so the mantle was passed from 1st century India, to mid-19th century United States, to early 20th century India, and back again to mid-20th century United States.

I think of this as my first detailed cartoon. I had read about Gandhi’s life, so I was bound to weasel him into one of my cartoons sooner or later.

Gandhi’s image is from a fairly well-known photograph by Margaret Bourke-White. The scenery is inspired by George Herriman (author of Krazy Kat). The cops came from a picture book on Los Angeles that my Grandmother gave me (a book I would never have imagined ever using). So many of my cartoons are montages of images from all over the place. That might be most of the fun.