Judge — April 20, 1895 — page 20: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This two-panel Judge cartoon satirizes a bicycle race, using racist caricatures and dialect ("Sumfin' busted," "de record") typical of late-19th-century American humor. The top panel shows spectators watching cyclists compete; the bottom depicts a catastrophic crash with multiple riders and machines destroyed in a pile-up. The joke plays on competing values: the first caption emphasizes a "rheumatic tire" winning and "de record" being "busted"; the second reverses this—the record survives while the rider ("Sumfin'") is destroyed. This mocks the era's obsession with athletic records and technological progress, suggesting that pursuit of records causes physical devastation. The "Blackville" setting indicates these are caricatured Black participants, reflecting the publication's use of racist imagery for comedic effect.