Judge — January 12, 1918 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a racist cartoon series depicting Black children attempting to fly by imitating the Wright brothers' early aviation experiments. Each panel shows a child attempting flight with makeshift contraptions—clothesline wings, wooden aircraft, baskets—resulting in crashes and failure. The satire works on two levels: it mocks both the aviation pioneers' early struggles AND uses racist caricature and dialect to ridicule Black people as foolishly imitating white technological achievement without understanding it. The title "Darktown Experiment" references a long-running stereotypical comic trope depicting African American characters in absurd situations. This reflects early 20th-century attitudes portraying Black people as comic subjects unfit for serious endeavors, while the aviation context dates the piece to the Wright brothers era (1903 onward).