Judge — September 17, 1898 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This Judge magazine cartoon uses racist caricatures and dialect to depict what appears to be two Black figures discovering a large rooster. The narrative follows their escalating reactions: first spotting a chicken-roost, then marveling at an enormous "Shanghai rooster" (a large breed), warning each other to stay quiet so "nobody" appears, and finally both jumping back in fright at the bird's appearance. The satire likely mocks both the figures' superstitious fear and rural simplicity—a common racist trope of the era. The "great surprise" is the comical revelation that what they feared was merely a rooster. The heavy use of exaggerated dialect and the setup suggest this targets turn-of-the-century stereotypes about Black Americans and rural life for white middle-class Judge readers' entertainment.