Judge — September 25, 1920 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This is a Judge magazine cover from September 25, 1920. The illustration, drawn by F.D. Johnson, depicts a scene titled "Held Up By Traffic—Blocked on Upper Broadway in 1640." The satire appears to be a **historical anachronism joke**: it shows Native Americans (identifiable by headdresses) seemingly causing traffic congestion on Upper Broadway as if they still occupied Manhattan in 1640—which was historically accurate for that era. The humor lies in the absurdist premise of modern 1920s traffic problems being "blocked" by Indigenous people, inverting the actual history where European settlement displaced Native populations. This represents the type of casual, crude racial humor typical of early-20th-century American satire magazines, using Indigenous peoples as comic subjects without meaningful commentary.