Judge, 1900-12-22 · page 26 of 48
Judge — December 22, 1900 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine cartoon depicts a racist scene using caricatured dialect and imagery. It shows two figures—labeled "Mose Moopus" and "Squire Henry"—discussing a raccoon treed in a church steeple on Christmas morning. The "joke" relies on degrading racial stereotypes: the exaggerated dialect ("De dogs," "'Deed") and the casual reference to burning down a church to retrieve game reflect deeply offensive caricatures of Black Americans common in 19th-century American humor. The satire appears to mock the frustration of hunting being thwarted by circumstance—the raccoon's inconvenient location making the kill difficult. However, the cartoon's entire comedic premise depends on dehumanizing racist stereotyping. This represents the type of explicitly racist content Judge regularly published, normalized in its era but completely unacceptable by modern standards.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
comicbooks.com lI ye ‘Sackett & Wilbelms Litho & Pig Co. New York. oF new vor. AGGRAVATING LUCK ON CHRISTMAS MORNING. Most Moopus—"* De dogs has treed de coon up de church-steeple, ‘squire !” Squiez HenNery—"' Ah, that's too bad !” Mose Moopus—'Deed. it is, ‘squire! It'll take "most till morning to burn dat steeple down, and dere hain't no use de boys trying to chop it down.”